


The Relapse

by Derin



Series: Parting the Clouds [32]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-01
Packaged: 2019-11-07 13:10:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 28,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17961167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derin/pseuds/Derin
Summary: Something weird is going on. Weird and impossible things are happening, like nightmares that leave evidence in the real world, and they seem to be centered around Cassie. Could Ellimist be messing with them? Could the recent use of the Time Matrix torn the very thread of reality, as they were warned it might? Or is Cassie simply losing touch with reality?The Animorphs need to figure out which it is, and fast. Because they're about to face a danger that none of them can possibly be prepared for.Thanks to Redtailedhawk90, Justanotherghostwriter and Zaqwer for their excellent beta work.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Heidely-ho readerinos! Sorry about the last update; the original draft was devoured by my computer and a series of family and technological emergencies slowed the rewrite. Another thing slowed me, too -- I'm pleased to announce that I've started an original web serial! It's called Haven and it's about a bunch of awkward teenagers with weird powers who make very bad decisions. I'm not straying too far from type, here.
> 
> You can read it here:  
> https://havenstory975986403.wordpress.com/
> 
> Yes, it's a queer-kid-goes-to-magic-school story. Do ten billion of these exist on the internet? Hell yes. Do any of those schools possess the DARK MYSTERIES of Skolala Refujeyo, ready to be unravelled by a handful of plucky teenagers with the assistance of allies of uncertain loyalties and motivations, lest thousands of lives be at risk? Uh... maybe. I haven't read them all to check. Nevertheless, feel free to tag along and solve those dark mysteries with us!
> 
> (Also, not to spoil stuff, but there's a tiny invisible dragon.)
> 
> Anyway... here is more Parting the Clouds. Enjoy!

I slept easily.

Easy sleep was rare for me when I didn’t take drugs. But if there were any nightmares of fighting hork-bajir or suffocating as a bug or being eaten by giant birds, I don’t remember them. But something woke me in the dark.

My eyes flew open, my breath caught, and I knew immediately that I hadn’t woken from a nightmare. I knew what it was like to wake from a nightmare. This feeling of high alert was different.

Someone was in my room.

Without moving, I glanced at the windowsill; no birds. No thought-speak in my head. My eyes darted instead to the door, to the figure lurking in the doorway, left hand on the light switch. I relaxed. I knew the silhouette – it was my mother’s. She was holding something against her side that I couldn’t make out in the dark.

“Everything alright, Mom?” I asked.

She flicked the light on. I caught sight of what was in her arms, and froze again. In her right hand, she held a Dracon beam that she had pointed directly at me. And wedged under her arm was Elfangor’s blue box, the _escafil_ device, seeming to glow softly in the bedroom light.

“Don’t move,” she said quietly, as if I could. I tried to rally my thoughts and pull them into some kind of coherent order.

Okay. Okay. This wasn’t happening. This couldn’t happen – it was impossible! But… but it _was_ happening, which meant it _was_ possible, which meant that… that the only way to figure out what the hell was going on was to figure out the things that made it impossible. Right?

“There you go, Michelle,” Mom murmured to herself. “I let you see your darling daughter. Now hush.”

Okay. Mom was a controller. That was perfectly possible – we already knew the yeerks were infiltrating the Gardens. But morphing cube? Impossible. Nobody had touched the thing since I’d hidden it. How could she have known where to look? Or even known that I could have had it?

“Don’t worry, Cassie,” she said, grinning a grin with no love or empathy in it, “I won’t kill you. It’d be such a waste, wouldn’t you agree? Destroying a morph-capable host body all ready for infestation – that’d practically be treason.”

And she definitely wouldn’t have brought the cube here. Or woken me up. Why would she wake me up? Why warn me? Which meant dream. This was a dream.

“How long have you been controlling my mom?” I asked, playing for time to think this through. I’d had a lot of weird nightmares, and I was never really conscious of them being nightmares; I didn’t tend to notice how weird they were. But this time I’d picked up on it. Did that mean it wasn’t a dream? Was there a way to test it?

“Oh, only a few months,” the yeerk said airily. “I figured you out right away, my darling _daughter_. You must have thought you were so clever… didn’t you? You and your environmental group. It’s almost insulting how transparent you lot are. But I couldn’t turn you in until I had this, and now… now, I have everything.” She glanced down at the cube, very briefly. Not enough time for me to make a run for it.

Was I dreaming? I couldn’t test it with pain; I’d felt plenty of pain in dreams before. Safest to assume I wasn’t dreaming. She had the _escafil_ device… somehow. She’d woken me up to brag… why? Not just to brag; too dangerous. Not even Visser Three would have done that, let alone a yeerk patient enough to wait months. Better to wait until I was infested. What could she possibly want from me that she needed me conscious for now, before infestation?

To negotiate? Had to be to negotiate. But what could I give her that she couldn’t force from me once I was infested?

Well, nothing like the direct route. “What do you want?” I asked. I kept my eyes on her, too; I didn’t need to look around to find an escape. I knew what my room looked like. On the chair next to me was a very heavy book that Ax had bought me for my birthday; that might make a rudimentary clubbing weapon, perhaps. Could I make it to the window? If I could leap through the window, I could morph away the glass injuries, take to the air, warn everyone…

“Want?” she asked. “From you? Nothing.” She smiled to herself. “There you are, Michelle. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? To see your darling daughter. Pay attention; this is the last time you’ll ever see her a free girl.”

Oh. No negotiation, then. I wasn’t actually part of this at all.

The yeerk raised the Dracon beam. I flung myself sideways, crashing into the chair covered in gifts beside me, rolled to put my bed between myself and the yeerk, but there was nowhere to go. Not for a girl tangled in bedsheets trying to flee an armed controller. I made a dash for the window, my only hope, and caught a glimpse in my mirror of the controller behind me as the yeerk raised my mother’s right hand, aimed the Dracon beam, and fired.

And then everything went black.


	2. Chapter 2

My eyes flew open and, with a strangled gasp, I sat bolt upright. I was in bed, amidst a tangle of blankets. It was dark.

A dream, then. Of course it had been a dream. It had made so little sense – if my mother had been a controller, there was no viable plan that involved coming into my room _with the cube_ , taunting me, and shooting me.

But the ache in my chest and head, the stiffness in my muscles… it certainly felt a lot like I was recovering from a Dracon stun. Resisting the urge to just morph away any injuries right away, I got up to inspect myself in the mirror. There was a streak across my back that might have been a Dracon burn, but it was pretty hard to tell. It didn’t take much power to stun a human, and at very low power, a Dracon burn would be hard to see on Jake or Rachel’s skin, let alone mine. Besides, even if there was something there, it was entirely reasonable that I’d pinched myself on something and had stiff muscles, and my mind had invented a dream about getting stunned based on that – dreams happened like that all the time. That was probably why the stuff normally piled on my chair was scattered all over the floor, too – something had fallen down in the night, and my paranoid mind had incorporated it into the dream as me flinging myself across the room to avoid Dracon fire. There was simply no other explanation for why I would still be alive and well and in my own bedroom.

I snuck down the hall and peeked into my parents’ room. Both of them, sleeping peacefully, Dad’s arms wrapped loosely around Mom’s shoulders. I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. That proved it, then. A dream. Yes. Of course it had been a dream.

I rubbed at the slightly discoloured patch on my back. Was it stinging when I rubbed it, or was that my imagination? Was it stinging like one might expect a Dracon burn to sting?

I quietly retreated from my parents’ room and headed outside. I jogged to the barn, slipped through the fence into the paddock behind it, and morphed horse. My limbs stretched, my fingers and toes fused, my light human body hair thickened into Midnight’s dark fur. And then I ran.

I ran across the field, air rushing through my mane, ground rolling beneath my hooves. I ran like nothing else mattered, like there was no war and fear and death and secrets. I ran and ran under the starlight until, eventually, I was forced to stop – I had reached my destination.

The old horse trough wasn’t maintained these days; there were no horses to drink from it any more. It sat at the edge of the yard, a huge piece of concrete filled with green, slimy water. I demorphed, then morphed hork-bajir. I dug Jara Hamee’s huge claws under one end of the trough, bunched his powerful muscles, and heaved.

A concrete horse trough is very, very heavy. A concrete horse trough filled with water is ridiculously heavy. Technically, it’s much too heavy for a hork-bajir to lift; at least, a hork-bajir who wants to have functional muscles when they’re finished. That, of course, was no problem for me; I let muscles tear, I let bones crunch. Agony rolled through my arms, my legs, my back, as I pulled back one end of the horse trough, bit by bit, careful not to disturb the moss growing on it or the slimy water inside. The ground beneath the trough was flat and devoid of grass; once I could get to it, I put the trough down, demorphed, and started to dig.

I didn’t have to dig far. Less than an arm-length down, my fingers scraped plastic. I hurriedly uncovered the rest of the cooler, then dragged it up. It was there. It was still there.

Hardly daring to breathe, I opened it.

The cube inside was flawless and alien. I touched my fingertips to it, and andalite writing glowed faintly on its surface. The _escafil_ device, still here. Still safe. Not in the hands of any controller.

My whole body sagged with relief. It had, of course, all been a dream. Of course.

After a minute, I buried the cube again, put the trough back, and headed home.

It took me a long time to get back to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

“Cassie!” Rachel gasped, staring at me. “Your jeans!”

It was recess time at school. I looked down. “What about them?”

“They fit! They go all the way to your shoes!”

“My grandma bought them for me.”

She dramatically put one hand over her eyes. “Oh, no. You know what that means, right?”

“… What?”

“Your grandmother. Your GRANDMOTHER. Has better fashion sense than you do.”

I rolled my eyes, then stifled a yawn.

“You didn’t stay up all night experimenting, did you?”

I shook my head. “Nightmare.”

“That thing with the giant bird again?”

“No, the normal kind of nightmare. You know.”

Rachel grimaced. “Sucks. Sleep deprivation can age you prematurely, you know.”

“Ah, yes, that’s truly the danger we should be worrying about. Sleep deprivation.”

“Did somebody say ‘incredibly handsome’?” Marco asked, sauntering over. He put an arm over Rachel’s shoulders, which she immediately shrugged off.

“We were talking about sleep deprivation, actually,” Rachel said, “which, to be fair, is just as much related to you as handsomeness is.”

“Because you stay awake all night thinking about me.”

“No, because it conjured an image opposite to you in every way, since talking to you for more than thirty seconds makes anyone fall asleep. What do you want, Marco?”

“I just wanted to know how well you guys are going on that English paper.”

“The one that’s due Friday?”

“Yeah. Just wondering if you had any ideas, you know.”

“You’re looking for someone to cheat off, you mean.”

“Would I do that?”

“Yes. Yes, you would. No getting out of it, Marco; it’s your turn to write the paper that we can cheat off this week. Cassie did it last week, and you cheated off my science, remember?”

“Remember when we had time to actually do our own schoolwork and learn things?” I mused.

“This system sucks,” Marco said.

“This system was your idea,” I pointed out. “You didn’t want to use help from Erek and his friends because we had to be able to talk about our own work and stuff.”

“Maybe we can get Erek to do, like, our first drafts or something? He owes us a lot of favors.”

“That can be your mission, Marco,” Rachel said drily. “Talk to Erek about homework.”

The bell rang. Time for math. Reluctantly, I started walking back toward the building, then hesitated. I knew I’d had a nightmare, but I couldn’t shake the terror and confusion of my mother standing over me, box under her arm and Dracon in her hand. The feeling that a couple of feet of dirt and a concrete trough was the only thing protecting the _escafil_ device from yeerk possession. I couldn’t stand the idea of sitting still in a classroom while the teacher droned on and on and all I could think about was that vulnerable cube.

I just needed to look. To make sure it was still safe. I could be back by lunch, and make up some excuse…

I turned on my heel and sprinted away from the building.

  



	4. Chapter 4

It was a good day. The sun shone brightly in a mostly clear sky, a few far-off clouds hinting at a possible afternoon rain, and in that sky, I flew.

It had been barely a week since the whole DeGroot thing, and not much had been happening on the yeerk front since then. Or it might be more accurate to say that we weren’t aware of much happening since then. A lot of our information came to us through Tobias, and he’d been distracted and mostly absent. I didn’t want to pry into whether he’d spoken to Ax yet. With Jake resentful of the time I spent with Aftran, David still very distant over the death of his father, and Rachel and Marco apparently determined to be as normal as possible while not much was going on, there wasn’t a huge amount of communication going on about the war. But that didn’t mean I didn’t have work to do. I should be trying to connect with Tobias at least; not pushing, but… being there. I definitely needed to talk to David. The loss of a loved one was… well. Something I didn’t have enough experience with, honestly. If only David and Marco got along better, Marco would be able to help him. Could I repair that relationship somehow? Help them be better friends? No, no… I couldn’t magic friendship into existence, and they’d both resent me for trying.

I flew over the barn, and out over the horse paddock. I caught sight of the water trough, and dropped several feet before remembering to glide.

The trough was empty. Water had been drained out onto the ground, and it had been dragged forward about a foot. I wheeled around and saw the hole. The hole dug where I’d buried the _escafil_ device.

What the hell?

Was this another dream? Was I still dreaming? Was I crazy? I could not afford to lose touch with reality, not like this, not in the middle of a war. Mom having the cube, but then not having the cube and her sleeping peacefully in bed, then the cube being gone again… nothing made sense.

Wait, was that hole deep enough? I was sure I’d buried it deeper than that.

I took a few minutes to scout the area well enough to be sure I wasn’t walking into an ambush, then demorphed, stuck an arm into the hole, and dug. Soon, my fingers hit plastic; I pulled the container out, opened it, and laughed in relief at the sight of the blue cube sitting in the bottom.

The cube still being there was definitely a good thing. It was also incredibly confusing. What could possibly have happened here?

I shut the cube back in its cooler and tried to think. Whatever was going on, one thing was clear – the _escafil_ device wasn’t safe with me. I could hide it again somewhere else, but that might just be delaying the problem. This was something I’d have to bring to the team, but for the moment, the important thing was keeping it safe.

I picked up the cooler, and walked into the woods.

When Ax had first moved into the forest, we’d all found the distance to get to him a bit inconvenient, but it was a small price to pay for his safety. These days, it just felt like a short, relaxing stroll. The sticks and rocks that cut my feet weren’t worth notice; if walking got too painful, I healed my feet and continued. Any blood I left would be washed away with the afternoon’s rain.

As I neared Ax’s meadow, I morphed Rachel just enough to thought-speak. <Ax, are you there? Is it safe for me to bring you something very important?>

<Hello, Cassie. I am alone. Should you not be in school?>

<Something came up.> I strode into the clearing. Ax was inspecting the ground with his main eyes, levering up tiny stones from between tufts of grass with his hooves and tail, but one of his stalk eyes focused on me. When I opened the cooler to show him what was inside, I had his full attention.

<Why have you brought this?>

“I need you to look after it. It’s not safe with me.” I told him everything that had happened, starting with the dream. “Ax, I don’t understand what the hell is going on, but whatever it is, we need to protect this.”

Ax picked up the blue box and inspected it from multiple angles. Andalite symbols flashed and changed across its surface. He frowned.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

<So far as I can tell, nothing. I was concerned that it might be a replica, if somebody wished to steal the device undetected, but it appears genuine. I am no expert, of course; it could well be a replica beyond my ability to detect, but if so, it was made by somebody with a good grounding of andalite language and the technology involved.>

“If someone wanted to switch out a fake, they would’ve buried it properly and made it look undisturbed,” I said, shaking my head.

<I suppose that that is true. I recommend that you take this to Prince Jake. You should not leave it with me.>

I shook my head. “If someone’s after it, I don’t want to go carrying it around town,” I pointed out. “Besides, you’re the andalite. It’s yours more than any of ours, really.”

<I can guard it temporarily,> Ax said reluctantly. <Very temporarily. But one of you must be its permanent guardian.>

I frowned. “Is this some andalite military culture thing?”

<Yes,> Ax said, seemingly unaware that I could read the dishonesty in his body language.

Weird. But probably not immediately dangerous, so I put the issue aside for the moment.

“Is Tobias around?” I asked. If Ax didn’t want the guard the cube, Tobias would be equally good at it.

<Not recently.> Ax sounded embarrassed. <I think he is avoiding me.>

“Why?” Had they not spoken about Elfangor? Was there some kind of family issue?

<You know that my brother’s letter unlocked certain memories that he had buried within Tobias’ mind?>

Well, that answered that, then. “Yeah?”

<It appears that his _thalhu_ is triggered by the particular shade of blue found in andalite fur,> Ax said, blushing. <It will fade with exposure, but it is apparently unpleasant and somewhat debilitating.>

“Not an ideal situation, then.”

<Indeed.>

Not an ideal situation. Like everything else in our lives, really.


	5. Chapter 5

“Wait,” Jake said, “what?”

It was after school. Six of us Animorphs (Tobias hadn’t been in his meadow) were gathered in the barn, frowning over the notes I’d spent the afternoon writing out while they listened to my story. I sighed, and explained the whole thing a third time.

“And the box isn’t fake, so far as Ax can tell?” Marco asked.

“That’s right.”

“And your mom isn’t a controller?” Rachel asked.

“Well, I don’t know if she’s a controller or not, but she definitely didn’t charge into my room with the _escafil_ device and shoot me. She seemed pretty normal earlier.”

“And somebody went to the effort of digging the box up, but then just left it there for you,” Jake said slowly. “So they know where it is, and decided to dig it up, but… didn’t want it?”

“Maybe they used it!” Marco suggested, snapping his fingers. “Maybe they just wanted morphing powers and used it, then reburied it because they didn’t need it anymore!”

<The device must be activated via thought-speak,> Ax pointed out, <so if anybody on Earth wished to use it, they would need the assistance of one of us, or of Visser Three. And Visser Three would not leave such a device in the ground.>

“Also, if they were going to rebury it, then I’m sure they would’ve done it properly,” I added, frowning. “It was mostly dug up and only under a few inches of soil.”

“Maybe it’s some kind of warning,” Rachel said. “From a secret ally or something.”

“I’m sure anyone who wanted to warn us that they knew where the cube was would find a more subtle way to do so,” Jake said slowly.

“Maybe Cassie’s just going nuts,” David shrugged. “Did we consider that? A lot of pretty heavy stuff happens in this war. Maybe your nightmares have graduated to hallucinations or something.”

“That’s not funny,” Rachel said sternly.

“He raises a good point, though,” I said. “Maybe it’s a side effect of the sleeping drugs or all the telepathic stuff or something. Either way, I’ve handed the cube over until we can figure it out.” I glanced at Ax.

Jake nodded. “Probably a more appropriate guardian, anyway. Ax being an andalite and all.”

<I must disagree, Prince Jake. I would prefer to hand the _escafil_ device to somebody else as quickly as possible.>

“Why don’t I look after it?” David suggested. “I’m the one who found it, after all. And the chee are great at hiding stuff.”

<For those very reasons, I do not think that that is ideal,> Ax said. <The yeerks know your appearance due to that incident and are hunting for you. And while I have accepted my brother’s decision to entrust humans with this power, I do not believe it appropriate to give andalite technology to the chee, even a technology that they have no personal use for. Surely Tobias is the rightful owner of the device.”

“Why Tobias?” Marco asked, frowning.

“Where is Tobias?” Rachel asked.

“He’s following up some yeerk thing,” David said wearily. “They’re moving a bunch of crates around and the chee don’t know what’s in them or why. Tobias and I are taking turns on scout duty.”

“Need help?” Jake asked.

“Not really. It’s a don’t-bother-skipping-school-for-it kind of mission. This blue box thing is kind of more important.”

Jake nodded. “The device is alright with you for now, Ax?”

<For now.>

“Okay. Then let’s try to get to the bottom of this.”

“Ellimist,” Marco said. “I just remembered, when weird stuff happens, it’s always Ellimist. Doesn’t this whole partly-but-not-really-stolen-cube thing sound kind of like that time he was teleporting Tobias all over the place to save the hork-bajir?”

“Ugh, not that guy,” David groaned, rubbing his temples. “The first time I dealt with him he sent us to fight space monsters, and the second time he killed my dad. I vote we don’t get involved this time. Just ignore it until he stops screwing with us.”

“What if it’s not Ellimist?” Rachel asked.

“Be serious, Rachel,” Marco said. “Is stuff like this _ever_ not Ellimist? We’re talking weird reality-warping nonsense here. Unless Cassie is just going crazy, I guess. Also a likely possibility.”

“If it is Ellimist,” Rachel said, pointedly ignoring that last comment, “there’s not much we can do except our own thing unless he shows himself. So I guess we should just… keep an eye on the situation until we know who our actual enemy is here.”

“Until we know what’s going on.” I nodded.

“Sounds dangerous,” Jake said. “I know the logic doesn’t work out with the whole thing with your mom, but...”

“I’m not in any more danger than normal,” I assured him. “You’re right; the logic doesn’t work out. She couldn’t have actually been there.”

“Unless it’s an alternate universe Ellimist thing,” Marco said, “in which case we’ll never figure it out. Oh, man; I just realised something.”

“What?”

“Remember when he said the whole Time Matrix thing was stretching the spacetime continuum to breaking point?”

<A completely nonsensical statement,> Ax put in.

“I’m sure he was just simplifying for us poor stupid three-dimensional-space muppets. My point is, what if the Time Matrix was too much for it? What if it… broke, or whatever? I mean, let’s be honest; a lot of what we did there didn’t one hundred per cent make sense.”

“How could you tell if anything made sense?” I asked, frowning. “I didn’t understand enough of it to know if it made sense.”

“Yeah but I was thinking about it later, and there were things like… like the Time Matrix taking us back to the construction site in our own past, even though we should’ve altered the timeline enough by then for that not to exist. Stuff like that. Anyway, what if it broke reality somehow? And there’s alternate dimension stuff slipping into our dimension or something like that?”

“I don’t think that’s how alternate dimensions work,” Jake said. “But then, we have no idea how they would work, so...”

“Animorphs: Shattered Reality,” David remarked, dramatically spreading his hands like he was outlining the words on a banner. “Sounds like a title for a bargain bin video game.”

“I would not play that game,” Rachel said.

“If I’m right, we might not have a choice,” Marco said. “The difference is, in a video game, they normally give you some clue about what to do. I have no idea what to do here.”

“I think I should sleep over at Cassie’s over the weekend,” Rachel said. “We can keep watch on her mom, see if we can pick up any more clues or whatever. I’ll just tell my mom I don’t want to be at home right now because everyone’s so stressed and upset over the whole Saddler thing.”

“How is your cousin?” David asked.

“It’s not… it’s not good,” she admitted. “He’s in intensive care. They’re going to give him heart surgery on Wednesday, but nobody’s very optimistic.”

David nodded. “There’s the obvious way to help him, you know.”

“The obvious way?”

“Bring the morphing cube to the hospital.”

We all stared at him.

“What?” he said. “You can’t tell me that didn’t occur to any of you? You saved me with it. Shouldn’t it work on him just as well?”

“It’d be really risky,” Marco said. “That’s a yeerk-controlled hospital. It’s overflowing with controllers, and I’m pretty sure they have their own Yeerk Pool entrance. If he’s in that bad a condition, we can’t exactly take him out of the hospital; we’d have to take the cube there. It could very easily fall into yeerk hands – hell, Saddler himself might be a controller.”

“That’s not likely, if he’s that likely to die,” I said. Why hadn’t that been the first thing to occur to us? Especially to me! I felt so stupid! “There’s no point in sacrificing a perfectly good yeerk in the head of a critical patient, and he’s from out of town, isn’t he? So he wouldn’t have been a controller when he went in.”

“It would be really dangerous,” David said. “You might say it’d be completely insane.” He glanced at Marco who, despite himself, grinned. “But we’re Animorphs – isn’t that what we _do_? And isn’t it worth it? To save your cousin?” He looked at Rachel and Jake, who looked at each other. It occurred to me for the first time that both of them had the same familial relationship to Saddler as to each other. Sure, they weren’t close to Saddler; he didn’t live nearby, and he wasn’t an Animorph, and everything they’d said about him made him seem kind of obnoxious. But still…

“We should look into the possibility,” Jake said. “But with everything going on, it might not be possible.”

“And we’re on a time limit,” Rachel said, sounding suddenly energised now that she had a solid goal with some solid threats. “That place is like Yeerk Central, not counting the Yeerk Pool.”

“So Yeerk Peripheral, then?” Marco asked.

“Oh, man; this is going to be tough,” Rachel grinned. “This is going to be awesome.”

“If we can find a way to do it,” Jake said.

“Yeah, yeah; of course. I’m gonna talk to Cassie’s mom and call my mom, get this sleepover thing set up.”

Jake nodded. “David, go find that guy you and Tobias are tailing and explain things to Tobias. We need him here next meeting; if we might be doing this, we need our expert scout involved. Marco, I want you to come with me when my family visits Saddler tomorrow; I need your eyes and your brain. Ax, keep that _escafil_ device safe. I don’t know what’s going on, but weird extradimensional nonsense or not, if someone’s after it...”

<They will not get it, Prince Jake.>


	6. Chapter 6

Watching my mom would be pretty simple over a weekend. She didn’t work weekends, so she usually just did housework or paperwork or went out to garage sales. We decided to tell her we were going to spend the weekend doing homework together, then realised we had a science paper due in about a week and decided to actually do homework together.

“She’s washing dishes,” Rachel reported as she entered my room with two cups of cocoa. “How’s the report coming?”

“I’ve finished my results and discussion,” I said, pushing my paper towards her. “This is a waste of time.”

She skimmed my work. “I dunno, I’m sure acidity is really important.”

“Yeah, but humanity already knows all this stuff! We’re in a position where we get the same results that people have known for thousands of years, or we know we’ve screwed up! Actually doing real science isn’t like that at all! Who’s this supposed to help? It’s pointless for people who won’t work in research science, and it’s harmful to those who will!”

“I guess they want to make sure we can write reports really well?”

“A scientific report is just an essay with an obvious structure.”

“I guess. You misspelled ‘acidic’ here.”

“Ugh. Of course I did.” I glanced at the door. “I should probably go check on her.”

“We’ll look really suspicious if we’re obviously watching her all the time,” Rachel pointed out. “You could morph – ”

“Yeah, if there’s weird reality-breaking stuff happening, I’m not doing anything that involves contact with zero-space unless I have to.”

“Good call. Probably.” Rachel examined her own report with a critical eye. “So what’s up with you and Jake?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’s up’ with us?” I asked.

“Are you guys fighting or something?”

“No! He disapproves of some of my life choices. But they’re not any of his business.”

“So you are fighting.”

“We can’t afford to fight. We’re parts of a very small force fighting a war together. We have to get along.”

“Mmm. That’s even worse.” She took a sip of cocoa. “If you had a fight, you could make up. Ignoring it like this is, well…”

I stared at her. It seemed rude to point out that she’d simply been ignoring the way I’d gotten her father involved in the war for over a year, so I didn’t. Instead I said, “How are things with you and Tobias?”

“Tobias?” She shrugged. “There’s nothing, you know, official between us.”

“Seriously? Get it together! Even _me and Jake_ have talked things out by now, and the two of you are way more direct people than we are. He’s in human morph often enough that he can’t be that hard to kiss – ”

“Cassie?”

“No. You teased me about Jake since we were about ten; now it’s my turn.”

She sipped her cocoa again and shrugged. “Things are a bit complicated right now. Not between us, just… with him. You know?”

I nodded.

“You heard the letter reading, right?”

I nodded again.

“So you know about everything.”

I was doing a lot of nodding.

“He’s been getting bits of memory all over the place ever since. Bits of… you know, where he sees something and gets all dizzy and remembers random disjointed bits...”

“ _Thalhu_ ,” I said. “Yeah, it looked like it was hitting him pretty hard.”

“I don’t think he should be out in the forest right now,” she said. “If he’s incapacitated at the wrong moment, he could die. But he’s doing his whole ‘a hawk lives by his wits’ nonsense. He thinks he can control it. I haven’t even seen him for a few days.”

“Ax said he’s avoiding him, too,” I said. “If he’s following someone in the city right now, we definitely don’t want him spacing out. He could fall into traffic.”

“Honestly, falling from the height a hawk travels at, I don’t think what you fall into really matters,” Rachel said with a shrug. “But I’ll corner him after the next meeting and tell him to stop being such an idiot.”

“Boys are always idiots,” I said. “It’s a law of nature. I’d better go check on Mom.”

I made my way downstairs, where Mom was still washing dishes, and grabbed a tea towel. “How goes the war against clutter?” I asked.

“Never-ending. How goes the war against bad grades?”

“Same as usual.”

“I heard that counsellor is leaving the school.”

“Yeah.”

“Are you going to see someone else?”

I shook my head. “I think I’m pretty much over everything,” I said. “The whole forest thing was a while ago.”

“Don’t rush yourself,” Mom counselled me. “These problems don’t disappear fast. You know Mufasa, right?”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not a lion, Mom.”

“Mammalian biology is mammalian biology. Mufasa was less than a year old when the Gardens rescued him from that dic – jerk owner of his, and he still bites at anything that surprises him. I don’t want you to push yourself into trying to heal faster than you actually can.”

I rolled my eyes again. I couldn’t explain to Mom that I probably knew more about trauma recovery than she did. I’d been experiencing a lot and reading even more, to help the other Animorphs. The mere fact that she assumed full recovery was a reasonable end goal… well, to be fair, she didn’t know most of it. She thought I was just generally stressed and had nearly died in the woods that one time.

“The school still calls me when you skip classes, you know,” she said. “I’ve told them to leave you alone; I know sometimes it’s too much for you. But if you can’t manage to get yourself to class every day, that says to me that you’re still suffering.”

“How do you know I’m not just being a rebellious teenager who hates school?” I asked, batting my eyes.

She laughed. “You? Rebellious? Oh, that’ll be the day.”

“I’m at that age now,” I added with a grin. “Any day now I’ll steal the car and go to a drunken party. And smoke!”

“You’d be more likely to lecture everyone on the effects of alcohol and cigarette tar on the body,” Mom said.

“Not anymore! I’m a rebel; I don’t care about learning!”

“So we didn’t receive an overdue notice last week for two library books about the evolution of the brain?”

“See, I don’t even return what I borrow anymore! Point proven!”

Mom laughed and flicked soap suds at me. I tossed the tea towel onto her head.

After dinner, we pulled the trundle bed out and set it up for Rachel. Watching Mom overnight wasn’t hard – every couple of hours someone would wake up and go peek in my parents’ room to make sure they were sleeping peacefully – but it did mean our sleep schedule was a bit interrupted, so we were both a little bit tired the next morning. Fortunately, I didn’t have to do all the morning animal feeding myself – I had a best friend to wrangle into helping.

“One little cup of pellets for those three cages,” I said, indicating with one hand while I set out pills with the other, “and a big cup for that cage. Leave the meat for now; I gotta crush this pill and mix it into Felix’s, it’s the only way he’ll take them.”

“How do you remember all this stuff?” Rachel asked.

“It’s written on the charts if you forget. Tick off each animal as you feed them.” I tossed her a pen, which she caught easily.

That was when David burst into the barn. He was red and breathing heavily. His hair was full of twigs, and his arms covered in scratches; unlike the rest of his body, they weren’t protected, because he wasn’t wearing a jacket. His jacket was wrapped around something very large that he carried in both arms. He looked at both of us.

He was crying.

“David,” I said, “what – ”

“I spent all yesterday afternoon looking for him,” he said. “He wasn’t where he was supposed to be! I checked all the usual places, but he wasn’t anywhere!”

Rachel frowned. “Who – ”

“This morning, I checked his clearing again, and I found him,” he said, laying his bundle out on the workbench. Carefully, gently, he unwrapped the jacket to reveal what had been important enough to run recklessly through the forest for.

It was a red-tailed hawk.


	7. Chapter 7

Rachel and I stared at the body lying on the workbench.

“I don’t know what happened!” David wiped his eyes. “A couple of days ago he was fine, and then – ”

Rachel swept David up in a hug. Not one of consolation; one of relief and joy. She picked him up off his feet, swung him around in a full circle, then dropped him and threw her arms around me instead.

“Jesus, David,” I said, “you didn’t have to scare us like that.”

David looked between us, frowning. “I don’t – ”

“That’s not Tobias,” Rachel explained. “If he died in Tobias’ meadow, he was probably an invader or something.”

“It’s weird,” I said. “Hawks don’t usually fight to injure or kill each other. Maybe he was poaching in Tobias’ territory while Tobias was out scouting, and ran into trouble.” I manoeuvred myself around Rachel’s hug well enough to inspect the body.

David looked at the bird. Then back at us. Then back to the bird. “I know it’s hard to accept the truth,” he said, “but that’s – ”

“Not Tobias,” Rachel insisted. “I do know what Tobias looks like.”

“Tobias’ body is a couple of years younger than this bird,” I pointed out. “He also has two paler-than-normal feathers right here.” I brushed the dead bird’s shoulder. “And look at this.” I lifted one leg to indicate a deep cut. “This leg wasn’t hurt in the attack that killed the bird. It’s been healing for a few days. Tobias wouldn’t have a wound like this; he’d heal right away with morphing.” I shook my head. “This is no more Tobias than I am the cashier at McDonald’s.” I frowned at the body. “This is very, very weird, though. You said you only just found it? In Tobias’ meadow?”

“Yeah. Thank god it isn’t him. I’ll keep looking.” David gave us a shaky smile. “Maybe we should bury this one, though. To show respect and stuff.”

“Since when have you cared about birds?” I asked. “Leave it here, I want to have a look at it.” I leaned over the bird. Rachel let go of me and got out of the way.

“Wait a minute,” Rachel said. “Does this mean Tobias is _missing_? We’d better find him. David, I’ll help you look.”

“I can manage on my – ”

“You won’t know all his places. I assume you’ve checked with the chee already… maybe see if he’s talked to Ax this morning? I’m going to swing by Melissa’s; he checks in with her for Star Defender stuff occasionally. Cassie, can you – ?”

“I can manage stuff with Mom,” I said, paying more attention to the bird than the conversation. I pulled the wings open, testing their resistance, then pushed them closed again.

The bird looked as if it had been attacked by another bird. A big one. Talons had pierced right through its ribcage and made a mess of its internal organs and a large, predatory beak had torn open the back of its neck. The awful smell of dead blood and guts was already upsetting the patients in the barn, and there’d be no saving David’s jacket.

The cause of death was obvious, but the manner was weird. Birds didn’t usually kill each other willy-nilly; the only reason for this attack would be for food, and no part of it had been eaten. Not even the claw and bite marks made sense if the point was a hunt for food. Even if the attacking bird had killed it for some other reason, although I couldn’t think what, if it had been on the meadow floor then something should have eaten it. Corpses don’t remain intact in a meadow for long; the scavengers get them. At the very least, it should be full of ants. But this body was clean.

Maybe it had died right before it was found? No… no, this blood was old. I couldn’t tell how old; I don’t know much about bodies. But then it couldn’t be that old, because within a few hours, rot should set in. I was smelling very little rot.

Some of the caged animals were getting quite upset. I put the body in a freezer bag and stuck it in the freezer, down deep under the urine samples where Dad wouldn’t stumble on it by accident. For the moment, I had real mysteries to figure out. Like what was up with Mom, and the _escafil_ device. Or what the yeerks were planning while we were distracted. Or how to get the _escafil_ device to Saddler.

Or what to write in the conclusion of my science paper.

  



	8. Chapter 8

“So nobody’s seen Tobias?” Jake asked, frowning. “You’re sure you checked everywhere?”

“We know the yeerks don’t have him,” David said. “Erek’s heard nothing, and if they had captured an andalite bandit, they wouldn’t keep it secret.”

“I do not-tuh believe that there-ruh is cause for concern,” Ax said, inspecting a piece of hay. “Nnnnn. Tobias isolates himself under emotional duress.”

“What emotional duress?” Marco asked, frowning.

“Maybe hearing the will of the dad who abandoned him when he was a baby?” Rachel asked, rolling her eyes. “I’d probably be pretty upset about that. He’ll come back to us when he’s ready.”

“That doesn’t sound like Tobias,” Jake said doubtfully. “But – ”

“Yeah, it does,” Marco pointed out. “Shortly after he became a bird he freaked out and went AWOL for days, remember? I don’t think he’d run off like that again without telling anyone, but honestly? I don’t think there’s much we can do. Either he doesn’t want to be found or he got into… other trouble. It’s a waste of time to search the forest for a human-intelligence-level hawk that doesn’t want to be found.”

“And if he’s in other trouble?” I asked.

“He can morph,” Marco said flatly. “Any kind of trouble that he can’t morph out of is trouble that… got him too fast. We’d be far too late to help.”

I tried not to think about the hawk in the freezer. It would have died quickly.

“There is no cause for concern,” Ax repeated.

Jake still looked doubtful, but nodded slowly. “Well, you and Rachel know Tobias better than I do,” he said. “If you think there’s no need to worry, then let’s move on to other problems.”

“Saddler,” I said.

Jake nodded. “Marco found a map of the hospital online. We went to see Saddler last night, and so far as we can tell, the map’s accurate.”

“The good news is that getting in and out of his room should be easy,” Marco said. “The yeerks don’t care about him; he’s not part of any of their plans and he’s not worth making into a controller. We can get in through the window, which doesn’t look too heavily guarded, get him the morphing power and get him out. But that plan would need Tobias for him to acquire, and getting the cube to the room in the first place could be tricky.”

“David or I could do it,” Rachel shrugged. “The cube’s heavy for an eagle, but not impossible.”

“Mightn’t that be a bit obvious?” I asked. “An eagle in the middle of the city, carrying a bag with a cube in it right into a yeerk-run building?”

“The safer method,” Marco said, “would be to walk through the hospital itself. Have Jake or Rachel carry it when they go to visit and somehow get a few minutes alone with him.”

“Which isn’t easy in an intensive care ward,” Jake said. “The instant he starts morphing, a million alarms are going to go off. And we have to get him out right away; he can’t just demorph and go back to bed. A completely healed patient is an inexplicable miracle in most hospitals, but in one full of yeerks used to fighting us…”

“I just realised,” I said, “we can’t afford to screw any part of this up even a little. We can’t afford to give any hint that we were near that hospital. It’s not just Saddler’s life on the line; if it seems like a bunch of ‘andalite bandits’ were trying to rescue this random human with no connection to David by breaking Seerow’s Kindness – ”

“That opens up a lot of uncomfortable questions that we can’t afford,” Jake finished. “Yeah.” He rubbed his temples. He glanced at Marco; a microsecond-long glance, one I would’ve missed a year ago. A glance full of pain and defeat and a plea for help.

Marco crossed his arms. “Jake. Buddy. You’re my best friend, and I know this is your cousin we’re talking about, but honestly? This mission sounds like a lot more danger than it’s worth.”

“How can you _say_ that?!” Rachel snapped. “If it was your cousin – ”

“Don’t have any of those,” Marco said quickly. “But we’re fighting for everyone here. How much good does it do any of your cousins if all of us and Saddler end up with yeerks in our heads?”

Rachel narrowed her eyes. “What if it was your Dad, then?”

Marco didn’t take the bait. His eyes widened innocently, thoughtfully. “What if it was my mom?”

Rachel shut up.

“Rachel, you don’t even like Saddler,” Marco continued. “Yes, this whole thing sucks a lot. No one should die because of some random traffic accident. If we were like, raising money for your cousin’s cancer treatment or something, I’d be out there doorknocking for donations with you in an instant. But we’re talking about using alien war tech from our alien war to solve this completely unrelated problem and put the whole war effort, including everyone we love, at huge risk. I’m not saying we throw this whole idea out; I’m saying we don’t go forward without a plan that’s actually good. I’m saying we have to be prepared for the possibility that we might have to walk away from this.”

“Then let’s come up with a plan that’s actually good,” David said. “It’s just an enemy-controlled hospital! Of course we can find a way to break in and share our alien healing magic!”

“Oh, look at that,” Marco observed. “Now even David’s insane.”

“Of course I’m insane! We all are! We’re Animorphs!”

“That’s the spirit!” Rachel crowed, lightly punching his shoulder.

“Also, Cassie, an alien is raiding your freezer,” David observed.

“What – Ax! That’s not a popsicle! That’s a – give it here. Here, _this_ is a popsicle. Remember to leave the grape ones for Dad.” I closed the freezer and sat on it.

“That reminds me,” Jake said, “how goes Momwatch?”

I shrugged. “She’s done absolutely nothing weird.”

“In a ‘I know I’m being watched’ way,” Marco asked, “or… ?”

“In a normal, not weird way,” I said. “I’m thinking I just dreamt the whole thing.”

“And what, hallucinated a huge hole in the ground?” Marco asked. “No, if we’re at that level of insane, this war is basically over. It’d be impossible to fight in that condition. You would have noticed.”

I shrugged. “I’m as confused as you are.”

“Okay,” Jake said, “keep an eye on it and have an escape plan. David?”

“Mm?” David looked up from the hospital map he was studying.

“You and Ax are Cassie’s backup for this. And Tobias, when he turns up.”

David gave a mock salute and went back to the map. “We could take this wall out with an elephant and a rhino,” he observed.

“How many people do you want to kill to save one?” I asked. “That is a hospital!”

“Also, the dude cannot be moved,” Marco pointed out. “He’s hooked up to a billion machines. Take out the wall and you’re going to kill Saddler.”

“Chill; it was just an idea.” He frowned at the map again. “If he could demorph with some of his injuries still, we could buy time if we had to…”

I shook my head. “We can fool the morphing a bit. Do clothes, keep scars, that sort of thing. But I don’t think the best morpher in the world could intentionally keep a bunch of bike accident injuries, let alone someone doing it for the first time. If we give him this power, the first time he morphs has to be during the escape, and we need to pull that off without the yeerks ever realising morphing was involved.”

“Face it, dude,” Marco said, “it’s impossible. Pick another injured kid to save.” He glanced up at Rachel, but she was busy wiping melted popsicle off Ax’s face.

“Any other Animorph business that we all need to talk about?” Jake asked.

We all shook our heads.

“I’m off home then. Later, everyone.”

I followed Jake out to his bike. When we were alone, he stopped. “Cassie, can you run a quick errand when you have time?”

“Sure; what’s up?”

“When they were talking about looking for Tobias, nobody mentioned the hork-bajir valley. Can you fly over and see if Jara and Ket have heard anything?”

“You’re really worried about him, aren’t you?”

“I know I shouldn’t be. He can take care of himself, and like Marco said, there’s nothing we can actually do if he did run into trouble. There’s something going on with Rachel and Ax, and they don’t want me involved; fair enough, it’s none of my business and I won’t go looking. But you…”

“Am the expert at butting into other peoples’ business?” I asked, raising a brow.

“What? No. You know what’s going on, right?”

I nodded, reluctantly.

“Then could you go have a look for me? I just want to know if he’s safe.”

“I’ll look.”

“Thanks.” Jake clipped his helmet on. I watched him ride away. I wondered what Aftran would think of everything that was going on.

Maybe I’d go ask her later on. After I’d visited the hork-bajir and dealt with all the Animorphs stuff. But not right now.

I couldn’t deal with everyone’s disapproval right now.


	9. Chapter 9

I dropped in on Ax on my way to see the hork-bajir later that evening. He was still up, even though the sun was starting to set. Like most andalites, Ax didn’t like the dark; andalites needed bright light to see properly. He was watching the sky, though, and noticed immediately when I flew into his meadow, only momentarily confused that it was me.

<I am expecting David,> he explained as I demorphed. <He wishes to start learning my language.>

“Oh! Good. I can come back another time.”

<No, he is not supposed to be here for eighteen of your minutes. How can I help you, Cassie?>

I hesitated. This was the worst time to bring this up, but Rachel had been right – ignoring interpersonal problems for team cohesion wouldn’t end well, and the list of team members with reasons to be upset with me was growing.

“It’s about Aftran,” I said.

Ax stepped back, just a little. <Is she in danger?>

“No. But I don’t think I properly apologised for what we did to you in the barn. I know you hate yeerks, and I know that if you could’ve said anything you would have refused to have her in your head, and I made her do it anyway. I’m sorry.”

Ax narrowed all four of his eyes. <That yeerk – >

“Didn’t want to do it,” I said quickly. “I made her.”

<But she _did_ do it. And so did you.>

“Yeah. You were dying in front of me and I had a scalpel and no idea what to do with it. I did the only think I could to save you, and I didn’t care that it was against your andalite code of honor or your direct wishes.”

<And do you care now?>

“I don’t want this to be between us.”

<That is not an answer, Cassie.>

I sighed. “I’m trying to understand. But you and Aftran both have these moralities that just don’t make any practical sense to me. I can understand not wanting a yeerk in your head or not wanting to be a _nothlit_ , but I don’t understand why you two look at death as a better option. I’m trying, but no. I just can’t care about breaking that rule for a few minutes more than I care about your life.”

<You believe that you did the right thing, then?>

“I believe that doesn’t matter because it wasn’t my decision to make. But I did make it, and I’d do the same thing if I had to make it again.”

<This is exactly why I hated exobiology class,> Ax muttered, and I couldn’t help but laugh. <If you want me to forgive you, Cassie, I can’t, any more than you can regret your decision.>

“I know. I understand.”

<But soon, you _will_ regret your decision. You will see that you violated my mind for no reason. And I hope that you can forgive yourself afterwards, at least.>

“Is this andalite philosophy stuff?”

<Yes. Oh, there is David.>

“I’d best be off myself,” I said. “Have fun, _ethil_ Aximili.”

I gave the eagle a quick wave and started to morph once more. Soon, I was once again in the air, the growing darkness meaningless to my owl eyes.

Most of the hork-bajir were asleep when I arrived. There seemed to be more finding their way to the valley every day. They slept in the trees, strangely hard to see against the bark despite being made of knives. Toby was up, a full third of the size of an adult already, staring up into a tree.

<Hi, Toby,> I said as I landed.

She didn’t seem surprised. She waved in the human fashion, not taking her eyes off the tree. “Have you come for him? I do not think he is back with us yet.”

<Who?>

“Tobias. His journey is starting to worry me. He drinks, but he has been gone too long for such a small thing to go without eating.”

I demorphed and climbed the tree. Somebody had woven a platform of sticks, the edges carefully rounded so that things would roll to the center. In that center was Tobias, wings and talons twitching with fitful dreams.

“Tobias?” I asked.

At the sound of my voice, the hawk’s eyes flew open. He fluttered upright. <Cassie, you have to go! Get everyone out, now! there’s no time!>

“What are you – ?”

<It’s David! He’s got the morphing cube! He’s going to give you all up to the yeerks!>


	10. Chapter 10

I didn’t wait around and insist on explanations. When an Animorph tells you there’s danger _right now_ , you react to that danger _right now_. I was morphed and in the air as quickly as possible.

But on our way back to civilisation at top speed, I did insist on explanations. So far as I could put it together, this is what happened.

Shortly after our escapade with the Time Matrix, Tobias started to think that David’s reaction to his father’s death was… off. He couldn’t be sure about this; people grieve differently, Tobias had never had a father to compare the emotional experience with, and we were all still dealing with the memories of our alternate selves at the time, so there were a lot of factors involved. Besides, Tobias would be the first to admit that he didn’t like David; his own personal biases might be getting in the way. Nevertheless, Tobias knew that David routinely lied to the other Animorphs (something that was news to me), so he started following him whenever he could to make sure he didn’t do anything reckless and hurt himself. He didn’t want to bring it up with anyone else unless he was sure something was actually wrong, it being a bad idea to set a precedent of worried Animorphs ganging up to spy on other Animorphs, and he’d pretty much convinced himself that he was imagining things when it came time to hear Elfangor’s letter. Ever since then, he’d been randomly spacing out with basically everything triggering _thalhu_ , but he’d had it together enough to find out that David had started following me. He’d been trying to find a way to tell me without letting David know when, one morning after recovering from a bout of dizziness enough to fly, he headed for the farm and saw something more horrifying than he had expected – David, digging under water trough, one of the places that Tobias suspected me of burying the morphing cube. (He hadn’t gone looking for it – hawks are just very observant.)

He’d attacked him to draw him away, of course, but there was nothing he could do to stop David from morphing eagle and fighting back. Tobias knew that we wouldn’t get out of school for hours, and he had limited options to protect the cube. If he could draw David far enough away, keep him busy enough, buy enough time to get help from the hork-bajir, he might have a chance.

So he lured him away, staying close enough to David to be a tempting target but keeping himself alive. David could have given up the chase and returned to the cube at any time; Tobias didn’t have a wide range of combat morphs and while he could cut David up and cause him a lot of trouble, he wouldn’t be able to stop or kill him. But David was determined to get Tobias out of the way first, so Tobias was able to draw him quite a way into the forest before he became too tired to keep dodging.

With few options left for survival, he managed to get himself far enough ahead of David to veer into a known red-tailed hawk’s territory and rustle up some trouble, then use the hawk as a distraction while Tobias moved at top speed directly for the hork-bajir valley. All he had to do was make it and explain. But at the sight of a hork-bajir, dizziness swamped him, dropping him from the sky, and he found himself wandering through memories that weren’t his until he heard my voice.

<David doesn’t have the _escafil_ device,> I explained. <I came home from school early and saw it’d been half dug up. It’s been moved. Dammit, we don’t have time for this on top of – wait a minute. This explains everything! There’s no reality weirdness, just an Animorph fucking with us!>

<Reality weirdness?> Tobias asked. <What are you talking about?>

<It’s how he knew where the _escafil_ device was,> I said. <It’s exactly the kind of trick David would pull.>

<What happened?>

<A few nights ago, I woke up in the middle of the night with my mother standing over me, Dracon beam in one hand and _escafil_ device in the other.>

<What?!>

<I know, right? Anyway, she made a speech about finally finding the cube, then stunned me. I woke up hours later, in one piece and definitely not a controller, with Mom sleeping peacefully in her own bed, so naturally I assumed it was a nightmare. But I had to make sure, so I went out to check that the _escafil_ device was still buried where I’d left it.>

<He followed you?>

<He must have! That must have been the point! He morphed my Mom, broke into my room with a fake cube and did a little speech, and waited for me to go check on it. I played right into his hands! That’s how he knew where to dig it up the next day! But you interrupted him and bought us enough time to hide it again. And then he brings us that dead hawk, which presumably he killed, and is like ‘I found Tobias and he’s dead’ like that’s not his fault, like he didn’t try to kill you!>

<Wait, everyone thinks I’m dead?>

<No, no; it was a different hawk. The one you stirred up, I assume. But he clearly thought it was you, and the fact he can’t recognise his own teammates after all this time would annoy me if it wasn’t eclipsed by the attempted murder and superweapon theft thing. Everyone expects you’ve gone off somewhere, which I guess was true. No wonder David wanted to find you so badly. He must really be sweating, not knowing when you’re going to show up and explain everything.>

<Where’s David now? And where’s the _escafil_ device?>

<I think Ax is teaching David his language. And the cube is… also with Ax. Uh-oh.>

<I think we should fly a bit faster.>

<Yeah.>


	11. Chapter 11

Ax and David weren’t in Ax’s meadow.

I tried not to panic. If David’s goal was finding the cube, he wouldn’t hurt Ax until he knew where it was. Instead, we prioritised warning everyone else. Tobias headed for Rachel and Jake’s neighbourhood. I headed for Marco and the chee.

“Seriously?” Marco growled. “I knew there was something off about that guy, but you’re telling me he’s a straight-up _traitor_?”

“I haven’t actually asked him,” I admitted, “but I’m having trouble thinking of good reasons for any of this. Trying to take the cube behind our backs… I can see that as an act of desperation maybe, if Visser Three was threatening his mom. It’d suck, it’d be a terrible decision and a huge betrayal, but given how we screwed up with his dad, I could understand the logic. But he tried to kill Tobias.”

“Which means this is something we have to _deal with_ ,” Marco concluded. “David’s our enemy, no going back. A rogue Animorph. Since this whole thing started, the one thing I never even considered we’d have to deal with was a rogue Animorph. A controller Animorph, sure, but…”

“But tying him up in the shack won’t help this time,” I sighed. “I wonder what Jake will do.”

“Does he know?”

“Tobias is telling him. I still have to warn the chee.”

Marco nodded. “I’ll head right over to Jake’s, then. See you soon.”

We morphed and went our separate ways. It was very late by this point, but Erek and his dad were up. I don’t think chee sleep.

“If he comes back here, do you want us to contain him?” Mr King asked.

I shook my head. “You shouldn’t put yourselves in any danger. He might hurt you.”

The two chee exchanged a glance.

“We are very difficult to hurt,” Erek pointed out. “It is extremely easy to disarm a human, even if he has a yeerk weapon, and none of his morphs can harm us.”

“You don’t seem very worried that an enemy knows your secret.”

“We’ve been on this planet for thousands of years,” Mr King pointed out. “Do you think the Animorphs were the first humans to notice something strange about us? We have ways of protecting ourselves from threats when negotiation fails.”

I thought about the yeerks who had been imprisoned in Erek and Jenny’s heads, and shuddered.

“Can you do it without hurting him too much?” I asked.

“We _can’t_ hurt him,” Erek reminded me.

“I don’t mean without _violence_. I mean without _hurting_ him.”

The chee exchanged another glance.

“We’re not really sure what you mean,” Erek admitted.

I sighed. “You’re in danger here, so I won’t even try to talk you out of doing whatever you think is best, but if you do manage to confine him, can you tell us so we can come deal with him?”

“There’s no need to put yourselves in danger,” Mr King assured me. “Even a shapeshifter can easily be confined indef – ”

“I’m sure he _can_ ,” I said sternly, “but that doesn’t mean he _should_. He’s an Animorph. He’s our problem.” I turned to go. “I’m sorry for all this,” I added. “This problem only exists because of us. We brought him on board; we let him find out about you. But we’ll fix it.” I started to morph owl.

“Didn’t you tell David who we were against the Animorphs’ wishes?” Mr King asked Erek, who shrugged.

“Blame chee-net,” he said. “It was a committee decision.”

When I could fly, I headed for Jake’s house. I needed to know how we were going to deal with this.

I wouldn’t let the chee deal with David because I simply didn’t trust them to understand how to imprison a human being humanely. And now I needed Jake to tell us what we were going to do that would be any more humane.


	12. Chapter 12

“So we kill him,” Rachel said, sitting on Jake’s bed. Tom was on a two-day Leadership Camp with The Sharing, so we had a small window of safety.

I bit my lip. “I don’t think that should be our immediate – ”

“He tried to kill Tobias,” she snapped. “He straight-up tried to kill him because he was in the way of his little theft. There are no second chances after something like that.”

<He also morphed Cassie’s mom without her consent,> Tobias added from his perch on Rachel’s arm, like that was on the same scale.

“We might have to take extreme measures,” Jake agreed reluctantly, “but I don’t think we should immediately assume that’s our only option.”

“Do you have a better one?” Rachel asked.

“No.” Jake rubbed his temples. “We should go search for him and Ax.”

Marco shook his head. “We don’t know what David will try and do if he’s tipped off that we know he’s a traitor. If he’s still with Ax, good; Ax is keeping him busy. We can go find Ax once we’re absolutely certain they’re not together anymore.”

“And if he tries to kill Ax, too?” Rachel asked.

“He won’t. He’s after the cube, remember? He won’t tip his hand until he knows where it is, and Ax is too cautious to let him get that information.”

<One weird maybe-dream of a relative going for the cube is worth investigating, but if he tried that sort of thing a second time on Ax, it would be suspicious,> Tobias agreed. <Besides, there’s no one he can morph to scare Ax. And if he’s smart, he won’t provoke a fight with Ax under any circumstances – fighting a hawk is one thing, but Ax is an andalite trained to fight. David wouldn’t stand a chance one-on-one with him.>

“That’s what Saddler’s about,” I realised. “This whole thing where he’s trying to save your cousin. I figured it was a personal thing; you know, since he was the first person we used the cube to save from injury, he’d be invested in it. But he just wants us to bring the cube to the hospital.”

“So he can steal it!” Rachel exclaimed. “Oh, that’s low. I knew David was a creep, but I can’t believe this.”

“So we have time,” Marco said. “So long as we can all act like we don’t know what he’s doing, and also keep this Saddler plan on the table, he won’t make any dangerous moves.”

“We don’t _need_ time,” Rachel pointed out. “We just need to get him alone. We can call a meeting in Ax’s meadow tomorrow and do it there; it’s six against one and he’s the least experienced Animorph. Problem solved.”

“There has to be another way,” I said.

“ _He tried to kill Tobias_ ,” Rachel pointed out again. “I know, I know, we don’t want to set any ugly witch hunt precedents of teammates or whatever, but I don’t care. He rescinded his membership to Club Animorph when he TRIED TO KILL TOBIAS.”

“I once nearly killed Jake in – ”

“Not the same thing, Marco! Jake was a controller and you know damn well he would’ve taken death over getting us all captured.”

“Yeah, I know,” Marco sighed. “I just hate agreeing with you. When Rachel’s plan makes the most sense, it means things have really gone down the toilet.”

“Whether or not we need time, we have it,” I pointed out. “Rachel, you’re probably right. He tried to kill one of us and it wasn’t to protect the world; there’s not much you can do with someone after something like that. But if we have time, I think we should use it to at least try to find other options. To see if we can find a way to be better than he is. This is a long war, and if we can’t keep finding ways to be better than out enemies…”

Jake nodded. “We should sleep on it. He won’t make any dangerous moves tonight. Although Cassie, if you can confirm that Ax is alright when you get home...”

“I’ll drop by his meadow.”

“Okay then.”

Rachel stood up sharply. She gently passed Tobias to Marco, then strode for the window.

“You guys get all the sleep you want,” she snapped. “There’s a threat to us out there, and I’m going to go deal with it. Permanently.”

“Rachel, don’t – ” I reached for her arm as she jumped out the window, but Jake stopped me.

“Let her go,” he said quietly.

“She’s going to kill him!”

“She has good reason to be angry. She’s not going to find him by flying around by herself at this time of night. She’ll burn herself out and tomorrow she’ll be more reasonable.” He gave me a weak smile. “I’m sure there’s no way she’ll actually be able to kill him tonight.”

But I knew Jake pretty well by this point.

I could tell when Jake was lying.


	13. Chapter 13

I searched a little for Rachel myself, but I already knew I wouldn’t find her. After dropping in on Ax, confirming he was okay and updating him on the situation, I went home and, a little after midnight, finally climbed into bed.

At least I didn’t have to worry about Mom being a controller any more. Well, not any more than usual. Instead, I had much bigger problems to worry about.

I got as much sleep as I could and tried to focus on school the next day. We’d been fighting long enough to know that sometimes you just had to let threats… keep existing for a bit. David wasn’t an immediate threat to anyone, provided Tobias stayed out of his way; for as long as he thought we didn’t know he’d betrayed us, he was safe.

But that charade was only going to last for so long. Eventually, one of us would break and make a move, or David would. It became especially hard to focus in class once I realised that Rachel wasn’t at school.

She showed up at lunch, just as I was considering skipping school to go look for her. She grabbed a usual serving of disgusting cafeteria food and, foregoing the usual charade of chatting with a few other friends first, marched straight for the table in the back corner where I was eating alone, slamming her tray down and staring straight ahead. And that’s when I realised that something was very, very wrong.

Rachel had been crying.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said woodenly.

“Did you catch up with David?”

“No.” She shovelled a forkful of macaroni into her mouth and started chewing mechanically. “I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find him.”

“Rachel,” Jake said, walking over with Marco behind him. “I missed you in class today.”

“Busy. What are you, my teacher?”

“Don’t sweat it; I skipped, too,” Marco said, sitting his tray down across from Rachel while Jake slid in across from me. “Who wants to do math at a time like this, right?”

“No, we have more important things to do,” Jake admitted quietly, glancing around to make sure nobody could hear us clearly. “We have to sort this mess out.”

“I already suggested how we can sort it out,” Rachel shrugged. “You all want to wring your hands instead.”

“I’m just saying we need to consider all our options.”

“I’d love to hear these options, Cassie.”

“I haven’t… thought of them yet.”

“Well then.”

“Hey Rachel, are you okay?” Marco asked. “Have you been crying?”

“I’m _fine_.”

“Okay, okay. It’s just been stressful and all.”

Something was off. I glanced from Marco to Jake. Like me, Jake was watching Marco carefully. He glanced away and met my eyes.

“She’s probably just upset at your hair, Marco,” I said. “It looked doofy when you got it cut, but somehow it grew out even worse.”

He jovially threw a bread roll at me. But no verbal comeback. Well, we _were_ all pretty stressed.

“First things first,” Jake said, “Saddler. He’s on a time limit. I feel like I’m skrull hunting here, don’t you think, Marco?”

“Ha, yeah, tell me about it,” Marco grinned. Rachel stiffened, suddenly paying complete attention, her hand tightening on her plastic fork.

“This whole thing is the Sleaze Troll on the Forgotten Bridge all over again.”

“I know, right? I’ve been thinking of how to do it, though, and I think there’s a way. It’s complicated, though; we should meet after school to discuss it.”

I had no idea what answer Jake had been fishing for, but the expression on his face said he’d been given the wrong one. Rachel saw it, too; her free hand shot out and grabbed Marco’s wrist.

“You’re not Marco,” she growled.

“Oh, aren’t I?” Not-Marco fluttered his lashes. “Want to say it a bit louder so the whole cafeteria can hear you, Rachel?”

“What did you do with Marco?” Jake asked evenly.

“I didn’t hurt him, if that’s what you mean. He’s just taking a nap.” David mimed shooting someone, and I automatically reached up to my chest, where he’d stunned me. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. We’re allies, Jake.”

“Allies?” Jake’s hands balled into fists. I put a hand on his wrist and gave him a look. _We’re in the school cafeteria. Potential enemies are everywhere. Don’t make a scene_.

Jake kept his voice low. “Allies don’t knock each other out and steal their bodies.”

“I _had_ to. You were all keeping secrets from me. Don’t pretend you weren’t – you’ve been doing it ever since I joined you, about every little thing. And I didn’t steal his body – he gave me this morph freely months ago, just like you did, Jake.”

“Did my mom?” I asked.

He met my eye. Nodded. “Okay, so we’re all on the same page. Good. That’s all I came to find out.” He tried to stand, but Rachel still had his wrist. He looked at her and raised his brows, like a teacher dealing with an unreasonable student. She didn’t let go.

“Did you kill Tobias?” Jake asked. I glanced at him, but he didn’t look back. I got the message – no need to let David know Tobias had shown up, if he didn’t know already.

“Oh. Yeah, I think I must have. Sorry. I mean, I cut him up pretty bad, and he would’ve shown up by now if he was still alive.” He offered Rachel a weak smile. “I’ll buy you a new one, okay?”

“ _A new one_?!” she hissed.

“A new bird! I mean, I won’t be able to get one that talks, but I can get something way fancier than a hawk. I’ve been saving a lot of money since becoming an Animorph.”

“You’ve been stealing,” Jake said.

“Not from anywhere in town, don’t worry,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I’m not getting in the way of your precious war effort and the yeerks won’t find out. It’s all digital, all sourced from the Web Access America headquarters, nothing local. No silly animal jewellery store heists or nonsense like that.”

“How long were you planning to betray us?” I asked, fighting to keep my voice low.

“Me betray you? Oh, that’s rich! Sorry, did _I_ kill _your_ dad? No, Cassie, I didn’t. But this yahoo here got my help by promising to free mine and then decided up and kill him right in front of me when he got a little bit inconvenient.”

I shook my head. “That’s not how it – ”

“He jumped in and attacked him, no questions asked. Let him bleed out in front of me. To save a fucking _bird_ who, oh look, ended up dead anyway. And we could have saved him with the incredibly powerful tool that you, Cassie, snatched away from us right when we needed it, took it off somewhere to hide it from me so my dad would die.”

Jake cut in. “The situation was a little bigger than – ”

“ – Bigger than my dad, I know. Bigger than the reason I’m even here. Bigger than me. I gave up everything for this war, but I’m always going to be the lowest priority, aren’t I? But oh, wait – I almost forgot. There my dad was, dying practically in my arms, and I couldn’t help thinking, ‘there’s something that can save him.’ Not the Time Matrix, which you decided to snatch away for no goddamn reason beyond ‘oooh, the magic time alien doesn’t want us poor mortals to have time powers’; no, I’d left a healing device in that very basement, hadn’t I? Until you lot took it from me, and dragged me into this, and let my dad die. Everything that led him to be in that construction site was your fault; your failed plans, your incompetence. Any tool that could have saved him was out of reach because of you. Your leader, your dead leader, springs out of nowhere and murders him, and all of you were happy about it, weren’t you? Dad’s life was a small price to pay, right? I guess I shouldn’t be surprised – you would’ve sacrificed me for him too if you’d gotten the chance. Just goes to show, some Animorphs matter more than others. I think I’m being pretty fucking reasonable in the circumstances.”

“David,” Jake murmured, “this is out of line.”

“No. You shut up. I’m done taking orders from you, murderer.” He yanked his hand out of Rachel’s grip. “Here is what is going to happen. You are returning my morphing cube to me, and I am leaving. I quit this little war game of yours. I am taking my cube far away and I am picking my own team and we are going to do things my way; that is, competently. You can mess around in this dead-end town as much as you want, but you’re going to lose, because none of you can plan a campaign to save yourselves, and when you’re all dead or the yeerks start expanding – which they will – my team will be there to swoop in and fight properly. That’s how it’s going down – I get my box, we part ways all friendly, we never see each other again.”

“And if we don’t?” Jake asked.

“Then I guess some Animorphs will be joining that goddamned bird you’re all so obsessed with until I get what I want. But I hope it doesn’t come to that. Have a nice day at school.”

He turned and stalked off. Rachel was staring after him, breathing hard. Her knuckles were white around her fork. Suddenly, she stood up and followed him.

I started to get up, but Jake put a hand on my arm and shook his head, very slightly. I watched them go.

“What the hell is he playing at?” I muttered to Jake.

“Hopefully, exactly what he says. Hopefully he just wants to take the box and go. Because if it’s anything else… well, we may really have a problem on our hands.”


	14. Chapter 14

I didn’t see Rachel or Marco that afternoon. It killed me to keep sitting in class, but I had to get my attendance rate up to stop my parents being suspicious, and the last thing we wanted was to make David think he could do whatever he wanted and we’d drop everything over it.

We’d lost the element of surprise. I couldn’t figure out how. He wouldn’t have stunned Marco unless he already knew that Marco had figured him out, but he’d come to school to see if we had figured him out yet and he didn’t know Tobias had turned up, so he couldn’t have spied on our meeting. Of all of us, Marco seemed the least likely to tip his hand. Had the chee tried to grab him and failed? Marco was the closest to Erek apart from David himself, so he might have assumed…

No, Erek would’ve found a way to inform us right away if something like that happened. It was a puzzle. Well, I supposed I could ask him when we… caught him. Beat him. And then what?

What can you do with a rogue Animorph?

I got off the bus early on the way home. I had to drop by Erek’s place. I had to see Aftran. Erek met me at the door and ushered me inside.

“Hey Cassie, any chance you could get us some owl feathers?” He asked conversationally as we headed for the basement. His father came down the stairs behind us. “We only need a few.”

“Uh, sure. Any particular kind?”

“Doesn’t really matter.”

“We have one in the Clinic right now. I can bring some by tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow might be a bit late,” Mr King said. “We’ll find them somehow, never mind.”

“I guess I could rush back and – oh, wait!” I morphed one arm to owl, painfully ripped out a handful of wing feathers and started to morph back. I handed them to Erek. “What do you need these for?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Erek said. Chee usually wear their emotions on their holograms; they both looked relieved.

I laughed. “Oh, I get it. You just wanted to see me morph.”

“We had to confirm that you were not David,” Mr King said.

“You could have asked me to do it directly,” I pointed out, rubbing the part of my arm that stung where the feathers had been pulled from it. It wasn’t injured – it was my human arm – but part of my brain was convinced that it was.

“We don’t know what he knows,” Erek said. “If you were him in disguise, we didn’t want to tip you off.”

“So he hasn’t been back?”

“No.”

The wall of the basement vanished, revealing the underground dog park.

“He knows we know,” I sighed. “He doesn’t necessarily know you know, but he’s probably assumed we warned you. It’s… complicated.”

“Dangerous?”

“Yes, but I don’t think he’ll sell us to the yeerks. So that’s something.” I strode out onto soft green grass and braced myself for the six dogs that immediately tried to make friends with me by throwing their entire bodies against mine. “Hey, do you guys have a plan for if the Yeerk Pool drills into this place? There’s a lot of stuff underground in this town and it’s all going to expand into each other eventually. This place doesn’t look easy to evacuate.”

“Hmm? Oh, no; we’re not anywhere near the Yeerk Pool,” Erek said dismissively. “We are too far from any human settlement for the yeerks to build here. The basement is not so much an elevator as an, ah...” he exchanged a glance with his father… “a teleporter, I suppose? The chee are fairly spread out over the globe, but this sanctuary is nowhere near anything accessible to, or wanted by, humans.”

“Oh.” I suddenly felt a lot more honored to be walking under their false sky. “That’s why I was able to get back here from Australia?”

“Exactly. We try to keep as many chee connected as possible, for obvious reasons.”

I approached Aftran’s pool. It looked the same as it always did; big metal tub full of sludge, with a screen down the middle with holes so fine it looked like solid metal to my eyes. It didn’t look as gooey as the Empire’s pool, but that was probably just because there were less yeerks in it, maybe? I didn’t know what sludge in pools was meant to be there and what was just yeerk slime building up in there.

Well, if anything was wrong with it, I’m sure Aftran would tell me. I headed for the side with one solitary yeerk swimming, rapped three times on the side, and lowered my hand just under the surface of the slime.

Within seconds, Aftran had settled on the back of my hand; I lifted her to my ear, and soon, we could talk.

<Cassie! It’s been a – something’s wrong?>

<Oh, yeah. Look.> I remembered a few relevant things to get her started and then took a backseat while she got caught up on events.

<Well.>

<Yeah.>

<This is suboptimal.>

<Uh-huh.>

<What are you going to do?>

<Talk to the team, I guess. I don’t know if we can stop Rachel killing the guy.>

<Do you want to?>

<What?>

<Why do you want to stop Rachel from killing the guy?>

I thought about this as we headed back for the Kings’ basement. <I don’t like killing anyone.>

<But you do kill people. A lot. And you’ve long accepted that sometimes, regrettable as it is, that’s what needs to happen.>

<Well, yeah, but if we can avoid – >

<I can feel your anger, Cassie. You’re refusing to let it show, even to yourself, but I can feel it. David’s got you angrier than Visser Three’s twin ever did, and you were ready to rip his head off. But you’re not even letting yourself go there this time. You’re not even letting yourself acknowledge your feelings.>

<Those feelings stopped me from thinking clearly then, and they’ll stop me from thinking clearly now. Tobias is safe. I can be furious later.>

<Why wait?>

<Because he’s an Animorph.>

<Nonsense.>

<He _is_ an – >

<So is Tobias. Since when does that matter? Don’t… don’t give me these ‘can’t set a bad precedent’ justifications you’re pulling together. You know as well as I do that this sort of thing wouldn’t arise with any other Animorph, so there’s no precedent to set; and you know that if it did arise, the right thing to do would still be to protect the group. So where’s all this doubt coming from? Why are you so determined to show mercy to this one traitor who tried to kill your friend?>

<You’re the mind reader! You tell me!>

<I can’t tell, either. That’s why I was pushing. Sorry.>

I said goodbye to the Kings, shouldered my schoolbag, and headed out to wait for another bus home. <I have no idea whether it matters why,> I admitted. <Is this even the time for self-reflection like that? There’s a rogue Animorph on the loose; this is not a great point to start meditating and getting in touch with my Inner Self.>

<But if you don’t understand your own motivations...>

<Then how can I prioritise and make clear decisions? Yeah, I know.> This was just like being tangled up over whether or not to tell dad about the Animorphs, back when Ax had been sick. But this was worse, because that had been about bringing somebody into the war. This was about how we were going to take somebody out of it.

When I got home, there was a message for me from Rachel, inviting me to hang out ‘in that nice little green park we go sometimes’. I made my excuses to my parents and headed straight for Ax’s meadow. Everyone else was already there except for Tobias and, of course, David.

<Hey, guys,> I said, landing on the ground and starting to demorph. Marco nodded to me; Rachel fluttered her fingers in a brief wave; Jake gave me a smile. Ax said, <We are operating under the assumption that David might be monitoring this meeting. Please moderate what you say aloud accordingly.>

<Should I stay morphed so I can speak freely?>

<No; the more foolish we can convince our enemy that we are, the better.>

<Gotcha.> To everyone I said, <Guys, I have Aftran with me. Are you okay, Marco?>

“Right as rain,” he said. “From now on I get to be anxious about being Draconed in my own house, so that’ll be fun.”

“Okay,” Jake said while I demorphed, “so we have a problem.”

“And a solution to that problem,” Rachel pointed out.

But Marco shook his head. “He’s not stupid enough to let us gang up on him,” he pointed out. “He won’t let us see him unless we’re in a crowded public space or something like that.”

“How long was he planning this?” I asked when I had a mouth. “Money from Web Access America; that fake cube… has he been getting ready for this from the beginning?”

Jake shook his head. “I don’t think it’s like that. You know how he thinks. He’s probably just been gathering resources that might be useful, and now, well, they are.”

“It’s a good idea, really,” Marco said.

“Theft is a good idea, Marco?” I asked.

“No. Just being prepared in general. And this backup Animorphs thing. I mean, let’s face it; the cube _is_ dangerous for us to have around. We don’t have much use for it ourselves; we’re too used to fighting as a small, close-knit team, and just incorporating _one_ new Animorph has been a huge headache. Besides, this is a dangerous war and we need all the backup we can get. A second team off somewhere else, who won’t be compromised if one of us is infested? Sounds like a good idea to me.” He looked around at everyone’s suspicious faces. “Oh, for… I’m not David.” He partly morphed gorilla to prove it.

“But you think we should do it,” Rachel said, still looking suspicious.

“Absolutely not. If you’d suggested it, Rachel, if you’d been all ‘I’m going to go live with my Dad, give me the cube so I can set up a second team,’ I’d be all for it. That would be an awesome plan. But this guy? After he killed Tobias? After he shot me and Cassie? If he had’ve approached us openly to begin with I might have fallen for it, but he’s shown his true colors now. He’s been trying to run circles around us, trying to manipulate us, he doesn’t care if his teammates get killed, and I don’t trust it.”

“He’s also weirdly obsessed with… power, I guess?” I pointed out. “You all know what I mean, right? He’s got weird ideas about leadership that...”

Everyone, even Ax, nodded immediately.

“Anyone on Team David is in danger from more than just yeerks,” Jake agreed, sounding reluctant. “He treats the war like some high school clique thing and he’s constantly suspicious of everyone. It wouldn’t work.”

<Is he feeling guilty?> Aftran asked me. <Why?>

<It’s a leadership thing. He feels responsible for whatever dumb shit his team does.>

<Oh, yes, I see. You were all bound to him before this war, after all. David was the real test of his leadership.>

<David’s an ass. It’s not Jake’s fault.>

<Of course.>

“Well, we have to do something about this,” I said. “What are we supposed to do, just put up with him harassing us for the rest of the war? He’s going to get us all killed.”

“Still open to suggestions,” Rachel reminded me. She slapped at a fly, then curled her lip and eyed said fly suspiciously. A branch behind me shook, and I spun, scanning the tree for a bird. Was this how the yeerks felt all the time?

<Yeah,> Aftran told me, <this is pretty much what it was like.>

“Okay,” Jake said wearily, “let’s just… sleep on it, I guess.”

“ _Again_?” Rachel snapped. “Are you just hoping this problem will solve itself if we sleep enough? The last time we did that, we lost the element of surprise!”

“What do you want me to do, Rachel?”

“I don’t know! You’re supposed to know! That’s your job!” She stormed off into the trees.

“So, uh… meeting over, I guess?” Marco said.

I followed Rachel. She was morphing eagle a little way away. I morphed osprey. The only way we’d be able to be sure of a private conversation was through thought-speak.

<Everything okay?> I asked her as soon as I could.

<You mean aside from the psychopath who tried to kill my – to kill Tobias?>

<Yes, aside from that. Obviously. You missed school, you showed up crying… something happened last night, didn’t it?>

<No.>

<Rachel, I – >

<No, I mean, something didn’t happen.> Rachel flapped her powerful wings, fighting for altitude. I followed suit. <I went looking for him after the meeting. I found him, just… joy-flying, or whatever. And you know what I did?>

<Whatever you did, I’m sure – >

<I did nothing. Absolutely nothing. I could have taken him; I had more experience, I had stronger morphs. But I couldn’t bring myself to kill an Animorph; I was too weak, too much of a coward. And now, anything he does to hurt anyone is my fault.>

<Rachel, not wanting to kill someone isn’t weakness. It’s a good thing. You have a good heart; you always have. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.>

<You don’t know what you’re talking about, Cassie.> She flew away, back towards her home. I considered following.

<You can’t do anything to help,> Aftran said.

<Hesitating to kill isn’t something she should be upset about,> I said.

<She’s not upset about that. She thinks she is, but she isn’t. She’s upset about being upset.>

<… What?>

<I thinik… I think this is a bit like how you felt when you didn’t really want to bring your dad on board. I think she’s upset because she backed away and her first thought was about how weak and cowardly that was. She’s upset because she’s so caught up in this war that hesitation to fight, hesitation to kill, has become a bad thing to her. You’ve known Rachel a long time. You’ve seen what this war does to her.>

<She’s been getting more aggressive,> I agreed, <but she does it to protect people.>

<And she’s been able to pretend that’s the case, just like you are, when it’s yeerks. But this is an Animorph – a rogue Animorph, yes, but still way too familiar. Rachel isn’t upset because she couldn’t kill an Animorph, Cassie. She’s worried because really, she knows she _could_.>


	15. Chapter 15

I went home, went inside, propped a chair under my door to block it, and lay on my bed. And then, for the first time since this whole thing started, I let myself feel angry.

The thing about working with wounded animals is, you can’t let yourself be angry a lot of the time. If you can’t learn to put the animal’s pain and fear above your own frustration, you’re not going to last, no matter how stupid or irrational the animal’s actions seem. Empathy is a necessary skill in animal care and rehabilitation, and no matter how many times they bite, scratch or spray, in the heat of the moment, you absolutely cannot afford to be angry.

But it wasn’t the heat of the moment any more. I’d been giving David every shred of empathy, understanding and help I could since he had arrived, and he’d used my innocent mother and Jake and Rachel’s dying cousin to deceive us, shot two Animorphs, and believed he’d killed a third without a shred of remorse. We’d done everything we could to help and support him, we’d risked our lives trying to save his family, and he’d betrayed us.

In the back of my mind, a voice protested that he was new, that he felt like the odd Animorph out, that his family had been taken from him and he’d watched his father die. I told that voice to shut up. All of our lives had been turned upside down by the war, all of us had risked and lost, and David had been a jerk from the start. He didn’t respect Ax (who was just an alien), Tobias (who was just a bird), Rachel (who was just a pretty girl) or me (who was just the leader’s girlfriend). He fought with Marco constantly, which… okay, Marco could be pretty abrasive; hard to begrudge him that. But he also goaded and fought with Jake, and interpreted anything anyone did in the worst possible way.

If he really wanted to keep fighting the war without being involved in our group, he would have asked for the _escafil_ device openly. He wouldn’t have tried to steal it, putting multiple lives at risk. He wouldn’t have been keeping secrets and going behind our back all this time. No; David had already proven that he’d say and do whatever he had to in order to get what he wanted. We couldn’t trust anything he said.

I knew what I was doing to myself. It was perfectly normal, perfectly human. We edit our memories to fit what we need to believe. What we need to do. Even people like me, who put so much effort into thinking and remembering clearly, who keep as detailed and honest notes as they can, can’t avoid it. It’s a basic part of how human thought works.

I was psyching myself up to remember David in the ways I needed to, to deal with him.

I was psyching myself up to kill.

<I still don’t want to do this,> I told Aftran. <Even after everything he’s done. I don’t know. Maybe I was just really hoping this would work; that we could just make new Animorphs, get as many reinforcements as we needed. And it was working! He was so helpful!>

<Maybe that’s it,> Aftran agreed.

<You could find out.>

<If I go digging willy-nilly through your mind? Yeah, maybe.>

<Maybe you should.>

<Is that what you want me to be, Cassie? The one who goes through your thoughts and can tell you what you are?>

<It’d be practical.>

<And you’d just believe my interpretation?>

<… No. No, you’re right. Self-reflection is important. Lazy short-cuts won’t help. I value your input, but I have to look after my own mind.>

I had chores to do. I got up and did them. I had dinner with my parents and talked about life and school as if nothing was wrong. Aftran helped me with my homework.

And I went to bed, trying to forget David standing over me in my mother’s form, Dracon beam in hand. Trying to pretend that sleep was still safe.


	16. Chapter 16

I woke at about three in the morning to my mother’s voice downstairs.

“I’m sorry, none of this is… look, do you want the Rehabilitation Clinic vet or the Gardens vet. No, we’re not the same… the Clinic is run by my husband. Okay, put my boss on the phone, please? Hi, yes, Gerald. What the hell is going on?”

Some work drama. I rolled over and tried to go to sleep.

“No, I heard him. I understand that. What I don’t understand is how there can be a _tiger_ in the goddamned _mall_.”

I sat bolt upright. Jake!

“Alright, alright. We’ll meet you there.”

I raced downstairs. “Mom? What’s happening?”

“Oh, hi, sweetie. Sorry if I woke you. Can you wake your father, please? Tell him to meet me in the barn as soon as he’s dressed, I’ll be packing the truck.”

“Mom, what – ”

But she was already heading for the barn. I woke Dad, hurriedly explained that there was an animal emergency and Mom had the details, then pulled some clothes on myself and raced out to meet her.

“Mom, can I come?”

“You have school in the morning.”

“Well I’m not going to get back to sleep now. You said tiger! In the mall!”

She sighed. “You can come if you help pack the truck. The Gardens van won’t start; we’ll beat them there and need equipment. Carry this.”

Less than ten minutes later, we were on the road, all three of us tired, confused, and dressed in the first clothes we happened to pick up. As we drove, Mom explained that according to her boss, some security guards were alerted by a series of loud crashes in the mall and came upon a tiger, badly injured, lying unconscious in the middle of the food court. Apparently it had fallen through the skylight. It was breathing, but nobody wanted to get close enough to see how badly hurt it was.

Jake. Why was he there? Had to be David. Unconscious – still within his two hours? Or trapped? Tobias was one thing, but we couldn’t keep a tiger alive. His chances of surviving in the forest were extremely low, and if there were two identical tigers at The Gardens, the controllers among the staff would catch on immediately. Suddenly, my plan to have Erek prioritise several vets and biologists for infestation didn’t seem like a great idea.

The Gardens vets! They’d be coming, too! Mom had said their van wasn’t starting, but they’d find a way to come back her up. Mom seeing a tiger she knew at the mall would be a confusing, impossible mystery, but any controller vets who saw it would know they were dealing with an ‘andalite bandit’. A helpless, unconscious one. And there were so many ways to kill a patient, so many excuses they could use to ship him off somewhere secret…

Dad was already hugging the speed limit, but I wished he’d drive faster. I wished I’d pretended to still be asleep and flown down. I’d heard ‘tiger’ and ‘mall’; I could’ve flown ahead and used morphs to avoid being recognised and… and done something.

<Good question,> Aftran said. <What are we going to do?>

<Keep them away from Jake, somehow.>

<And David? A leopard can’t beat a lion. And if you’re still determined not to kill him...>

“Are we sure this wasn’t a prank call?” Dad asked Mom. “A tiger from some private zoo on the edges of town, perhaps, but how did a wounded one get to the mall?”

<Why didn’t David kill him, if he’s that badly hurt?> Aftran asked.

<I don’t know. He was interrupted, maybe?>

We pulled into the loading zone closest to the food court. Two worried-looking security guards lurked in the doorway, keeping an eye on the food court while staying well away from it.

“What’s the plan here?” Dad asked.

“We can’t move him safely until the Gardens bring a stretcher, but if he’s dying, we might be able to stabilise him,” Mom replied. “We can sedate him and treat any external wounds at the very least. Hand me that bag.”

We headed inside, and there was Jake.

He was unconscious, but bleeding. Several deep wounds on his neck and shoulders were bleeding freely, and his sides and legs were slashed in several places, presumably by the shards of glass that surrounded him. A table was broken under him.

He’d fallen through the skylight. Which meant the fight had taken place on the roof. David hadn’t followed him down to finish him off; he probably hadn’t wanted to deal with the security guards. Not that a few security guards should be much of a problem for a lion.

“Wait a minute,” Mom said, “I know this tiger! That’s Sampson!” She headed for her patient. Automatically, I started to follow.

“Hey!” Dads hand wrapped around my arm. “Stay here!”

“Hmm? Oh, right.”

“That’s not some raccoon or skunk, Cassie. It’s a full-grown tiger!”

“Okay, okay, I’ll keep my distance.” I pulled myself out of his grip.

<Well, at least we can be pretty sure your mom isn’t a controller,> Aftran commented.

I nodded absently. A controller wouldn’t have been confused by Sampson’s appearance. A controller would have pretended not to notice who it was, and got to work killing him.

So Jake was probably safe while Mom was working on him, but he was on a clock. I needed to get him somewhere safe to demorph, somehow, before his two hours were up. Before The Gardens sent vets – controller vets, probably from the list of infestation targets I’d given Erek – to load him into a van and take him off to some yeerk facility. Before David found a way to finish the job.

Okay, so… distraction? Pull everyone away from the scene and get to Jake, maybe give him some adrenaline from Mom’s bag?

No, Mom wouldn’t leave a patient unless she absolutely had to. I could set the mall on fire and she wouldn’t move until she herself was suffocating.

<I wish we knew how long he still had in morph,> I said to Aftran.

<Wouldn’t help; we can’t get him out either way.>

<Then we need to minimise the dangers to him that we can minimise.> I tried not to think about what would happen if Jake got stuck as a tiger.

<You could kill Sampson and replace him,> Aftran suggested.

<Let’s try to arrange things so that doesn’t have to happen.> I watched Dad go to help Mom, made sure nobody was paying attention to me, and left the building. There was a dumpster nearby that had a good space behind it for stashing clothes, so I did so, and started to morph.

Not leopard or hork-bajir. I probably wouldn’t win a one-on-one fight with David, and Aftran was right – if I wasn’t willing to kill him, there was no point in trying. It would just be putting myself in unnecessary danger. Not owl, either; David knew to watch out for birds, and so presumably did the controller vets who would be arriving soon. I needed to be unnoticeable, but with decent senses, and agile enough to get away from any danger I might end up in.

So I focused on squirrel.

Seconds later, I was shooting along a power line onto the mall roof. There was a lot to see up there; when two very heavy cats have an all-out fight on a building, they leave evidence. A metal pole whose function I couldn’t begin to guess at had been bent a good forty-five degrees where someone had slammed into it, and blood was splashed everywhere. My squirrel brain hated the smell of it.

Movement! Shadow! No, it was just bug moving around a streetlight.

I followed the trail of blood to the skylight. Very little of the glass was left in it, and the shards that were there were tipped with dried tiger blood. The glass in the skylight had only been a couple of years old; once upon a time Marco had broken it with a baseball, and here it was broken by Animorphs yet again. But I was interested in the trail leading away from the skylight. I wanted to know where David was now.

The bloody footprints leading away were distinct, but a far fainter trail than the one leading to the skylight. I was disappointed by that. I hoped it was lion’s blood I was seeing. They didn’t stretch too far away before there was a faint smear, and then… nothing. David had demorphed. Dead end.

Well, if he’d had to demorph so quickly, then at least Jake had given him some pretty big cuts. Good.

What now? My squirrel nose wasn’t good enough to follow a scent trail. If I were a wolf I could –

Shadow?

Caught!

My whole body locked up in terror as the eagle’s talons gripped me and lifted me up, up into the sky.

<Look what I found, Rachel,> David gloated. < _Now_ will you calm down and be reasonable?>


	17. Chapter 17

I tried to fight the panic, but it wasn’t easy. Both my human mind and my squirrel mind knew that this was a very, very bad situation.

<Aftran, can you help?>

<Maybe. I’ll try.>

My breathing slowed. My heart stopped pounding so hard. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to let me get a grip and take stock of the situation.

<David,> Rachel said with terrifying calm, <if you harm her in any way, I _will_ kill you.>

<Oh, but you’ve been threatening to kill me this whole time! So I guess there’s no reason for me not to just… squeeze.> He tightened his grip marginally. Not enough to cause damage, but enough to make breathing harder. I clamped down on the sudden panicked desire to beg for my life and instead tried to get my bearings.

David was flying us away from the mall, over the road. I couldn’t see Rachel anywhere. If I tried to morph, he’d be able to kill me before I finished, and even if I somehow distracted him it would be a long fall onto a road – long enough to kill me, not long enough to demorph and remorph bird.

The road wasn’t deserted. Among the sparse midnight traffic, I spotted a van being escorted by police cars. I could make out enough of The Gardens logo to realise that Jake was out of time.

<Now then, Rachel; let’s just talk. Aren’t things much nicer when we just talk?>

<’Just talk’ doesn’t involve threatening to kill my friends. Put her down; this is between you and me.>

<What, like you threatened to kill my mom?> David’s fury was clear in his thought-speak; his talons were painful against my ribs. Under the pressure, there seemed to be so little room for my heart to pound.

<Cassie,> Aftran said, <I can’t help keep the panic down if you keep freaking yourself out more. Do we have a plan here?>

<A plan to do what? He’s going to kill us or he isn’t! We don’t have any moves to take!> I’d been in tight spots with yeerks before, but there was always something to do; some hope of some strategy that would get me out alive. And if I failed, well, that was enemy action. That was the risk we took. We hadn’t expected anything like this risk when we’d made the fateful decision to make David an Animorph.

David was still talking. <Don’t go all high-and-mighty, this-is-just-between-us on me now, Rachel. Jesus, you’re such a hypocrite. You were the one who jammed a goddamn fork in my ear and threatened to kill my mom. You watched Jake kill my Dad and supported him. You were happy when he did that, weren’t you? Happy to see my father bleed out on the ground because at least your precious murdering cousin got to live.>

<He was going to – >

<Hurt your precious birdie, I know. You can be such a stuck-up bitch sometimes, you know that? I’ve been nice to you, I’ve been there for you, but all you ever do is give me lip and obsess over your pet. You’re all the same. Ever since I got here, I’ve done everything I can to help this team, and all you guys can whine about how whatever I do is wrong. You and Cassie were both going to kill that time Matrix dude, then you went all soft and girlie, and when I stepped in to do what needed to be done, suddenly I’m the bad guy? Jake can kill my dad but it’s okay because at least your pet survived? Well that just worked out great, didn’t it? I hope he enjoyed his extra month of life.>

<It was more of a reprieve than you’ll get when I get my claws in you.>

<Cassie,> Tobias said privately, <don’t react, but get ready to move.>

<Tobias? Where are you?>

<Out of sight, don’t worry. Now, in about a minute, I’m going to give a signal and I need you to bite David as hard as you can and start demorphing right away. Right away; no time for delay. Can you do that?>

<What’s the plan here?>

<Can you do it?>

<Yes. Yes, we’re ready.>

<Good. Standby.>

David and Rachel were still talking. David laughed. <Oh, you love to talk the talk, but I know you’re just a coward on the inside. I know you forget this sometimes, but you _are_ a girl, Rachel.>

<And you’re a worm. Let’s see who wins that fight.>

<Okay, I think you need to calm down. This war’s got you all twisted up so you think you have to play the big tough Amazon all the time, and honestly, I blame the others for that. Jake and Marco are probably hard to keep up with, making you do their jobs half the time and making you feel like you need to be tougher the other half. When you’re my second-in-command you’ll be a lot happier.>

<When I’m what? Just how delusional are you?>

<Well, you’re not shackled to that bird any more. You can go wherever you want. If you need me to remove more incentives for you to stay, then...> He squeezed.

<No!> A bald eagle flew up from a nearby rooftop and headed straight for us.

<I’ll kill her! I’ll kill her if you touch me!>

Rachel banked at the last second, sailing over David and coming to rest on the mall roof. <You fucking coward, David. Fight me properly.>

<You mean fight you stupidly? This is the problem with you Animorphs; you’re idiots. You’ll lose this war if someone isn’t there to pick up the pieces after you get yourselves killed.> He drifted over the mall roof, above Rachel, taunting her. I couldn’t help but notice that from my perspective, a very deadly drop onto the road had become a merely dangerous drop onto a roof.

<Cassie, now!>

I put my entire focus into sinking my little squirrel teeth into David’s leg with all my strength. He cried out in pain and squeezed, breaking ribs – but Aftran was already putting all of her focus into demorphing. As claws pierced our flesh, digging towards organs, we grew, forcing the claws open.

It wasn’t a pretty demorph. My lungs and probably several other internal organs were still very damaged when I landed heavily on my back on the roof. The back of my head slammed against the hard surface, and I had to blink away spots to try to find David and figure out why he hadn’t managed to kill me.

It was because he was distracted. Distracted by the rapidly growing lump clinging under his right wing in a spot very hard for him to reach while flying. While Aftran finished our demorph, I watched Rachel grow, dragging David down to the roof.

Struggling to breathe through my own blood, I glanced, confused, at the bald eagle sitting next to me.

<Are you alright?> Tobias asked.

“How…?” I breathed.

<There’s a bald eagle up in the mountains near the hork-bajir valley. But right now we need to get off this roof, because someone is going to come and investigate this noise, and I want to be out of here before David starts asking questions, let alone the yeerks.>

“Jake...”

<Will be fine. In a few minutes, that Gardens van will be being driven by a gorilla, and Ax is there to make everyone think twice about giving Marco any trouble.>

I let Aftran morph while I turned my attention back to Rachel and David. Rachel was almost fully demorphed, and David wasn’t stupid enough to remain eagle and take on a human who had hold of his wing; he was demorphing, too. Rachel grabbed for his throat; David kicked her chest, pushing her away.

Meanwhile, my lungs were healing, my bones were changing. I watched my skin thicken, but it wasn’t until the blades started sprouting that I realised what morph Aftran had chosen.

<Hork-bajir? Really?>

<You need firepower to back Rachel up, and it’s agile enough to get up and down buildings,> Aftran explained. <Besides, if any controllers see you, they won’t be able to call in free humans for help; they’d be obligated to hide your existence.>

David and Rachel circled the skylight. Neither had bothered to start morphing again. David levered a piece of blood-caked glass out of the frame, held it up like a knife, and grinned.

“It’s too bad, Rachel,” he said. “You would have made a great sidekick.”

<David,> I said, <don’t.>

He glanced at me. Glanced back at Rachel. Ran the calculation. And then, with a cheery wave, he ran straight for the edge of the roof and jumped.

“He’ll be injured when he lands,” Rachel said urgently. “Go keep him that way while I morph.”

“There are a whole bunch of people down there, controllers and otherwise,” I said. “We can’t finish this here.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” Rachel glanced at me sidelong. “But you understand that we have to finish it eventually, right?”


	18. Chapter 18

None of the Animorphs got anything done in school the next morning. I let Aftran point my eyes at blackboards and memorise information while I just… sat there.

<Aftran, are you bored?> I asked after a while.

<… What? With math?>

<Just in general. I feel like ever since we met, your life hasn’t been that great. You spent ages in the dark of the Empire pool, then you got caught and nearly died, and ever since then you’ve just been hanging out alone on the chee basement and occasionally coming out and helping me do schoolwork or whatever. It doesn’t seem fair.>

<Fair? Sometimes I forget how human you are, Cassie. ‘Bored’… really.>

<What’s that supposed to mean?>

<Our emotions aren’t the same as yours. There’s nothing wrong with spending long periods in a pool and having occasional trips out, and it’s not as if your life is boring.>

<Yeerks don’t get bored?>

<Oh, we do. But from very different things.>

<So you’re happy, then?>

<Well, it’s a war. We’re all surviving.>

<That’s not a ‘yes’.>

<Are you happy, Cassie?>

I hesitated. <It’s a war,> I agreed. <We’re all surviving.>

<I won’t lie; the loneliness is a real kick in the osmosis nodes. I thought the Empire pool was deathly quiet but it’s nothing to having a grand total of five poolmates, half of whom are mentally damaged and all of whom hate you. Still, it’s a step up from my earlier presumed fate of being tortured to death.>

<Better than death, sure. But still, I’m sorry.>

<Don’t be. We’re all doing our part. And don’t forget, I was raised an Empire yeerk, where the choices were live your whole life in silent darkness or work yourself to the brink of starvation every three days, constantly putting your life on the line to claw up a ladder in the hopes of eventually finding a safe and happy rung that doesn’t actually exist.>

<Aren’t all yeerks raised as Empire yeerks?> I asked.

<Well sure, I guess. I mean, I assume so. Except the Iskoort, obviously.>

<Obviously.>

After a few seconds of thoughtful silence, she added, <Come to think of it, how does the Empire maintain influence over the homeworld? They say we’re all unified, but the andalites have the homeworld cordoned off.>

<You’re trying to avoid thinking about David.>

<So are you.>

The bell rang. As students poured out into the corridor for recess, we spotted Vice- Principal Chapman heading our way, pushing his way through the crowd. My immediate reaction was panic – had David turned us in? Did he _know_? But no, no; the yeerks wouldn’t approach us like this, in a crowded school. They’d come through our families, or while we slept.

Chapman looked right at me, then looked away. I relaxed, until I noticed who his gaze had locked on.

“Jake! Rachel!”

Marco caught my eye. The two of us pulled away from Jake and Rachel, ready to vanish and run interference if necessary.

Chapman bent down to speak quietly to them, his face grim.

“Both of your families have just called,” he explained. “It’s about your cousin. Rachel, your mother is coming to take you both to the hospital right away.”


	19. Chapter 19

Five minutes later, the four of us loitered in the parking lot.

“Saddler had a heart surgery booked for today,” Jake said. “This can’t be good.”

“I can’t believe Chapman wouldn’t tell us what happened,” Rachel growled. “Liability my butt. It was just a question.”

“You guys don’t have to come, you know,” Jake added.

Marco shook his head. “Oh, we’re coming. David’s not dumb enough to attack a hospital full of yeerks, but the car on the way over? No, we shouldn’t go anywhere alone from now on.”

“My mom is already super freaked out about the wounded tiger who went missing and showed up completely fine back in his enclosure in the Gardens,” I pointed out. “You’re going to be on the news. Let’s avoid any more of that.”

“And with all of us, we should have no trouble killing him next time we see him,” Rachel added.

So it was decided, and the four of us, plus Rachel’s sisters, all crammed into her Mom’s little family car and headed for the hospital. It was a tight fit. Rachel, naturally, claimed the front seat, leaving the rest of us to cram into the back. Sara sat on my lap, with Jordan sandwiched between me and Jake. Marco was pressed against the door.

“We have good news,” Rachel’s mom explained as we got ourselves sorted.

“ _Good_ news?”

“Yes. When they brought Saddler in for surgery, the examination of his cuts and bruises didn’t match up with their records. His ribs were far less severely broken than previously thought, and his heart seems completely fine.”

“That’s… weird,” Marco said, frowning.

“Apparently it’s more common than you’d think; rapid healing, spontaneous remission and doctor error just happens sometimes and can’t be explained. Frankly, that gives me a lot less confidence in our medical system, if even the doctors don’t know what’s going on. But the hospital staff say they’ve never seen anything this drastic or rapid. They can’t explain it.”

Jake and I exchanged a smile. Amidst everything, a bright spot of hope. The Animorphs might be having a really rough time, but out there was one family whose doomed son would be going home with them.

Aftran perked up when we entered the hospital. <Wow, there are a lot of controllers here.>

<You can tell?!>

<Well, no; not in the way you mean. I just recognise quite a few of these hosts, and I think I recognise some of the yeerks. I’d bet anything that receptionist has a Derane in her head – I don’t know why, but Deranes with human hosts always hold their pens like that. And that guy with the leg cast might be Jillay zero-seven-four, who I used to pull guard duty with. Good to see he’s still about.>

<How do you know so many people?>

She mentally shrugged. <I know the normal amount. The natural population of a human tribe is, what, somewhere between one and two hundred people?>

<Yeah, probably.>

<So you’re equipped to deal with about that many people. What do you think the natural population of a yeerk pool is?>

<Why is it that any time we talk, your people just sound scarier?>

We followed Rachel’s mom to Saddler’s ward. His own family were in there talking to him, along with a very businesslike nurse. She gave Marco and I, the obvious nonfamily-members, a hard look, but didn’t send us away.

“He really shouldn’t have this many visitors at once,” she told Rachel’s mom. “There is technically a three-person limit.”

“I’m fine!” Saddler called.

“We’ll wait for them to leave,” Rachel’s mom assured her.

She didn’t have to wait long. Everyone hugged and left, and we were waved in.

Saddler looked… kind of like Jake or Rachel, I supposed. To be fair, Jake and Rachel didn’t look all that similar to each other either, and it was hard to make out Saddler’s features under the cuts and bruises that covered his face. But he grinned brightly at the sight of us. “Jake! Rachel! Jordan, Sara! Where’s Tom?” He frowned. “It’s Tom, right?”

“He has lost a lot of his memories,” the nurse explained. “He still remembers some key events, but don’t be surprised if he doesn’t recall something.”

“Do you remember that you owe me twenty bucks?” Jordan asked.

“Ha, nice try. I remember that you’re a con artist.”

“Tom will come by with my parents later, I’m sure,” Jake said. “I just happened to be with Rachel already at school.”

Marco and I hung back. It had seemed important to guard Jake and Rachel on the trip, but now that we’d arrived, we… didn’t belong. This wasn’t our family. It wasn’t our issue.

But it was nice, still, to see him smiling; the boy we’d been prepared to try to save, and hadn’t been able to. Somehow, he’d saved himself. It was nice to see a little of the shadow disappear from Jake and Rachel’s eyes.

“They’re telling me that if I keep healing like this I might be able to go home in a week,” Saddler said. “I told them I really need to stay for longer, because there’s a big math test coming up I’m not ready for.”

“Can you even remember any math?” Sara asked.

“I guess we’ll find out when I do the test. Kind of makes you want to turn into a bird and fly off into the forest, but that would probably end even worse.”

I jumped. I looked at Saddler; at those cuts and bruises that, now that I thought about it, seemed a little too fresh for someone who had been in hospital so long. He was looking at Jake and Rachel. And grinning.

<It’s nice how things work out, isn’t it, cousins?>


	20. Chapter 20

David’s voice sank into my mind, bringing with it some very dark implications. Rachel had gone completely white; Jake’s expression was stony. I grabbed Rachel’s arm, Marco grabbed Jake’s, and we pulled them out of the room.

“Glad you’re doing well, Saddler, but we have homework of our own to work on!” Marco called over his shoulder as we made our way through the hospital. Rachel’s arm was trembling in my grip; her lips were white. But she didn’t say anything. She kept walking.

“Do you two want a lift home?” Rachel’s mom asked Marco and me in the parking lot.

We shook our heads.

“Your car will be crowded enough,” Marco pointed out.

“We’ll catch a bus, thanks,” I added.

After they left, I looked at Marco. “You’re going to go back in there, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m going to go back in there. We have to know what that bastard thinks he’s playing at.”

I shook my head. “You two have clashed with each other ever since David came on the scene. You’ll only escalate things if you talk to him.”

“Cassie, you know he had to do something with that kid to take his place. How much further can things escalate?”

“He could turn us over to the yeerks, if you push him. So unless you want a lion-on-gorilla fight in the middle of this hospital, I should talk to him.”

“You think you can do better?”

“Yes. There are only two of us who David doesn’t give a damn about, and Ax isn’t here.”

Marco nodded. “I’ll back you up, in case things go south. He intended to be found here. He’s expecting an Animorph visit. See if you can arrange a meeting outside the hospital; we might still be able to ambush and kill him.”

“Why are you so gung-ho about killing him?” I asked.

“Cassie, we don’t have many options.”

“I know, I know; he’s a danger to all of us. And I get that Rachel is the kind of person to face threats head-on until they don’t exist anymore. But you’re usually sneakier than that, and you jumped right on that Kill David bandwagon right away. What’s up with you?”

“What’s up with me? How can you still be giving him chances, after everything he’s done, everything he puts at risk? He’s not even a little bit sorry about Tobias, and he tried to kill Jake, Rachel and you last night, remember?”

I looked away. Why was it so important to me to keep David alive, despite everything? I didn’t know.

“Look, Cassie it’s very simple. We can dither all we want about what’s right and what’s best and what risks are and aren’t too high, but this choice is already set in stone. We made it the second we agreed to retrieve the Time Matrix.”

I looked at Marco in surprise. That wasn’t what I’d expected to say. “What’s the Time Matrix got to do with any of this?”

“Do you forget the price? The life of an Animorph, remember?”

“Yeah, and Jake died.”

“In a war, yes. Maybe Crayak made that happen, maybe it would’ve happened deal or no deal, but either way… he’s not dead now, is he?”

“Well, no because we made it so the whole thing didn’t happen.”

“Did we? I remember it happening.”

“Well, yeah, but not to Jake.”

“Cassie, the price of an Animorph’s life was demanded by Crayak,” Marco pointed out. “A god of spacetime who hates us. Do you really think we can fool someone like that with a time loop?” He shook his head. “I know we ‘outsmart’ Ellimist all the time, but that’s because Ellimist plays fair – well, sort of. He _wants_ us to win. Crayak wanted a dead Animorph, and he had a dead Animorph. And when Jake came back the first thing he did was…”

“Defend Tobias by killing David’s father. Oh, god.”

Marco nodded. “We wouldn’t let him have Jake, and suddenly, Tobias’ life is on the line. We refused him Tobias, and in doing so, killed David’s dad and lost David.”

“Are you saying you don’t think any of this is David’s fault?”

“What? No, no; it’s David’s fault. I don’t think he’s being mind-controlled or anything like that; Ellimist and Crayak are big on free choice. Killing David’s father lost us David because David chose to use that excuse to turn on us; what I’m saying is that one way or another, it’s going to end with a dead Animorph. So tell me, Cassie – who’s it going to be?”


	21. Chapter 21

We dropped off Aftran with the chee before speaking to David. She’d been out of the pool for a couple of days and it was making her nervous. I felt a bit… empty… without her. It was a lot easier to work with her; there were two of us to give undivided attention to two tasks at once, or share perspective on a single task to accomplish it more efficiently. Having her leave was kind of like walking out of a cinema and noticing how small everyone looks. For a few minutes, being alone felt weird.

I made a mental note to think about this later, when I had time. If – when – we won this war, there would be a lot of ex-controllers running around, voluntary and involuntary. Whole new fields of psychology would have to be developed to deal with their trauma and, perhaps, addiction. (Could hosting a yeerk be addictive? Being smarter, more competent, never alone, able to step back and zone out and just live with less effort at any point… it might be.) I didn’t have the skills to do any of that, but it was important information to keep in mind when making decision that could shape the outcome of the war.

Decisions like how to deal with David. A lot of things were harder to think about alone, but some were easier. There were trains of thought I didn’t pursue with Aftran; not on purpose, just things I didn’t want an audience for. Things I could think about when she was gone.

All the ways we could kill David if we had to, for example.

As seagulls, Marco and I circled the building, looking for David’s window. I was mostly relying on Marco; I didn’t have a head for maps.

<We don’t actually need to find him,> Marco pointed out. <Both of you can thought-speak. It’d be safer to have this conversation without him knowing where you are.>

<No, it has to be face-to-face. I want to start with a precedent of honesty and straightforwardness.>

<Cassie.>

<I need to see the bastard’s body language to find out what he’s up to,> I admitted.

<Well then. It’s the third window from the right, over there. I’m going to land on the roof and get bigger.>

I could have told him that being a gorilla on a yeerk-controlled hospital was stupid, but he could equally have told me that approaching a known enemy as a fragile bird in a yeerk-controlled hospital was stupid. Neither admonishment was going to accomplish anything, so neither of us bothered. I landed on David’s windowsill and tapped the glass with my beak.

<It’s me. Can we talk?>

<Ah, Cassie. I was expecting one of my cousins.> The blind opened. The window didn’t. <Are you alone?>

<What do you think?>

<Fair enough.>

<How do you morph with the injuries?>

<It’s really not that hard to injure myself each time. The doctors have given up trying to explain my healing, so as long as it’s in vaguely the same area, they don’t look too closely. The hard part is morphing with this still in.> He indicated the drip line in his arm. <It took a lot of practice. I doubt even you could do it.>

<The yeerks in the hospital will figure out what you’re doing.>

<No, Cassie, they won’t, because from their point of view, what I’m doing doesn’t make any sense. If I showed up instantly healed, they might wonder if andalites wanted something with this kid, but there’s nothing about morphing that suggests rapid but realistic healing. Nobody, yeerk or human, has enough information to suspect anything weird is going on, let alone try to figure out what. Only Animorphs know. And I trust you to keep the secret.> He winked at me.

<What’s your game here? Why are you hurting these people?>

He looked surprised. <What do you mean, what’s my game? I already explained what I’m going to do. I’m going to take my morphing cube, move away and start my own team of people worthy of being Animorphs. Obviously, I need a family for that. Being homeless sucks, and I’m not hurting anyone. This family was broken up over a tragedy, and now the problem is solved. These nice people have their son and brother back, and sure, he might be a bit different, he might have different tastes and moods and not remember things very well, but do you think they’re going to care? The way I hear it, the original Saddler was a total jerk. They deserve better.>

<And what happened to the original Saddler?>

<Oh, there’s no need to worry about that. Nobody will find him for a very, very long time. There’s nothing here to cast any suspicion on you guys.>

<You killed him.>

<He was already dead.>

<No, he wasn’t. I’ve run dozens of acquiring experiments, and I know that you can’t acquire the dead. You just can’t. You killed him, didn’t you?>

<His heart had stopped! That means he was dead!>

<No, it doesn’t. Hearts get restarted every day.>

<Oh, don’t be like that, Cassie. Everyone knew he was a goner as soon as he got here. He was just hurting everyone and wasting the staff’s time; he was never going to survive.>

<He deserved a chance!>

<So did I! I deserved a chance to reunite my family, and you guys took it away from me and acted like I was the unreasonable one! Well, this family will do instead. Don’t act like I’m the bad guy here; it’s you guys who won’t leave me alone.>

<You tried to kill me!>

<In self-defence! Blame Rachel for that, not me. I just wanted to talk and she went absolutely psycho and tried to kill me; I grabbed whatever I could to protect myself.>

<And Jake?>

<Same story.>

<That doesn’t sound like Jake.>

<Yeah, well, maybe you don’t know your precious boyfriend as well as you think. You watched him kill my dad and you still think he’s a paragon of virtue, so don’t act like you know what you’re talking about. Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore; I’m done with all of you. It’s a pity Rachel didn’t come around, but since we’re cousins now that’s probably for the best. So you’re going to bring me the cube, I’ll get discharged and go to my new home, and our teams can compare notes at Berenson family reunions.>

<What makes you think we’re going to give you the cube?>

<Well, you don’t _have_ to,> David replied with exaggerated casualness. He inspected his fingernails. <I can’t make you. I don’t think I could trick the alien as easily as I tricked you. But it’s kind of important that the yeerks get defeated, don’t you think? And you idiots are going to screw it up.>

<What makes you think you can do better?>

<Oh, I _am_ going to do better. With or without your help. I’d rather do it with my own team, but if you’re going to be uncooperative, I’ll just have to find another way to contribute. See, I know a lot of people in the government, through my dad. I have some pretty important email addresses. So I set up a timed email to fire off in about a week, explaining – with a lot of photographic evidence – the alien supercomputers that are just hanging around, full of all this really advanced technology, that can’t fight back.>

<You’re going to sell out the chee? After everything they did for you?>

He rolled his eyes. <They’re not people, Cassie.>

<How can you say that?!>

<Because it’s true. They’re not people; they’re computers in screensaver mode. Their owners died thousands of years ago, so using them isn’t even theft. And when you guys screw up and this war goes public, America is going to need to defend itself. We’re going to need either andalite tech or pemalite tech to do that, so make up your mind.>

<You’re sick, David.>

<See, this is why girls shouldn’t fight. You’re brave enough, but when it comes to the real decisions, you fall apart. We’re going to win this war no matter what you incompetents do, so pick your method. Which tech are you donating to the cause?>

I watched him there, sitting on his bed, enjoying how he toyed with us, enjoying pretending to be nice and reasonable while he pushed everyone’s buttons. I remembered how he’d clashed with Tobias and Marco from the beginning, how he kept trying to put Jake and Rachel in their place.

And I understood. I understood why it was very, very important that we didn’t, under any circumstances, kill David.

<Quick question for you, David,> I said. <When you build your team of Animorphs, what are you going to do when they start talking back and going against your plans and thinking they have better ones?>

He rolled his eyes. <I told you, Cassie; I’m only recruiting worthy people. Not a bunch of random kids who happened to cut through a construction site.>

<And if you have an off day and pick someone difficult?>

<Then I’ll whip them into shape. We’ll have a proper hierarchy, with proper training. Nobody gets morphing powers until they can prove their loyalty; until I’m sure.>

<Yeah, that’s what I thought. Be seeing you, David.>

<Only one last time, I hope, with the box. Otherwise...>

<Yeah, I get it.> I flew off. I didn’t bother talking to Marco; he’d see me leave. I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

I had to be alone to concentrate. If I wanted to protect the Animorphs, I had a lot of planning to do.


	22. Chapter 22

I spoke to each Animorph individually that night, mostly because I didn’t want Jake and Rachel going over and starting a fight. But it was a full three days before the five of us were able to meet in Ax’s meadow.

“He’s bluffing,” Marco said, not looking up from the TV he and Ax were installing in the scoop. “He’s in hospital, pretending to be a sick kid. Where’s he going to get internet access? He can’t leave for too long or someone would notice. Anyway, I don’t care how many government friends his dad had; nobody’s going to take a teenager’s email about alien robots seriously, no matter how many photos he took. Which the chee would have noticed, by the way.”

“There’s a lot of things he shouldn’t be able to do, but he keeps doing them,” I pointed out from my spot sitting on the grass. “We didn’t know he’d held onto that fake cube. We didn’t know he’d stolen a bunch of money from Web Access America. If your argument is ‘he wouldn’t have prepared that far’, we’re going to find ourselves caught off guard.”

Marco nodded. “Yeah, that’s true. And even if it’s not the chee, he’ll find something else. We need to end this before anyone else gets hurt. Let’s go get that cube.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Rachel, who had been pacing along the treeline, stopped to glare at Marco, then me. “Are you two serious right now? You want to give in?”

“He does have a good plan,” Marco pointed out.

“Have you both forgotten that _he killed Tobias_?!”

“Tobias was a casualty of war,” Marco snapped. “We agreed to these risks when we started fighting yeerks. Yeah, it sucks that he died in such a way, it really does; but he’s not the first innocent to die in this war and he won’t be the last. What we need to focus on right now is how to best fight the yeerks moving forward, and you know I hate David, but he’s right. We’re going to need backup. Or do you want to keep messing around until one of us joins Tobias? Maybe Cassie?”

I hugged my knees and stared at the grass, avoiding Rachel’s gaze.

“Cowards,” Rachel said. “You’re both cowards. I can’t believe you.”

“Oh, we’re cowards?” Marco asked. “How many times have you gone toe-to-toe with him now? If you were half as strong as you pretend to be, this would’ve been dealt with before he had a chance to set up any emails, and we wouldn’t be having this problem.”

“He’s right, Rachel,” Jake added. “You drove David to this and couldn’t handle it, and now we have to deal with it.”

“I’m sorry, _I_ drove him to this? Weird, I don’t recall killing anyone’s dad. I guess that must have slipped my mind.”

“Oh, well perhaps if _you_ had – ”

“Guys, stop!” I cut in. “Please just stop fighting! This isn’t helpful; we need to work together!”

Jake nodded. “Ax; where’s the _escafil_ device?”

<Prince Jake, I do not think this plan is – >

“Tell me where the cube is, Ax. That’s an order.”

<… Very well. I disassembled it and distributed the pieces in multiple locations. I can list – >

“You can do that?” Marco asked. “Disassemble it?”

<Of course. After Cassie’s failure to protect the device, it seemed a natural precaution to prevent theft. It would take an andalite to reassemble the pieces.>

“Okay, fine. You get them, I’ll go see David.”

<I will need assistance. Some of the pieces were hidden in ways that are rather more complicated to retrieve. They will take two people.>

“I’ll go,” Rachel said eagerly.

Jake shook his head. “I’m not an idiot. You’ll take the first opportunity to break one of them. No, let’s all just talk to David first. He’s being discharged in two days; I’ll go set up a meeting.”

“Two days?” I bit my lip. “That’s only going to give us a couple of days to save the chee.”

“I’m sure Ax can reassemble a cube in less than a couple of days. It’ll be fine, Cassie.”

“Sure,” Marco mumbled. “Fine. Everything always goes fine for us.”


	23. Chapter 23

David wanted to meet in the mall. He told his ‘parents’ that he wanted to hang out with his cousins before leaving town, and met us in the food court. Aside from a taped-up skylight above us and a suspiciously new table, it looked how it always looked. No tiger blood, no sign of recent chaos.

Ax was already halfway through his normal cinnamon bun when David arrived. He was being very serious today, which meant he was eating slow enough to not accidentally eat the plate.

“Why does he always do that?” David asked me conversationally as he sat down. “He’s not like this with other morphs that have taste.”

“Humans are omnivorous scavengers,” I shrugged. “We have a pretty broad palate compared to his other morphs. Besides, no other animal he’s morphed has spent thousands of years engineering their food to be as delicious as possible.”

“Can we get this over with?” Jake asked impatiently.

“Of course.” David smiled. “Now, I believe you guys were going to make a decision.”

Jake sighed. “Ax disassembled the cube, and gathering the parts is taking longer than expected. We don’t have it here today; we need a bit more time before that email goes out.”

David shook his head. “How stupid do you think I am, Jake? The second I stop that email; you’ll have one of your cronies kill me. No, no; we’re staying on schedule.”

“We’re doing everything we can!” I snapped. “We need more time!”

“I don’t see why five of you would be having trouble,” he said. His eyes fell on Rachel. She was white, her hands balled into fists, and she wasn’t looking at him. “What about you, Rachel? Are you putting your all into ‘saving the chee’?”

“David, if we could stay on top – ”

“Shut up, Jake. I’m tired of hearing your voice.”

Jake shut up.

“What’s the matter, Rachel?” David continued. “We’re building a happy ending for everyone, but you don’t look too happy.”

“Oh, I’m looking forward to being rid of you, David, don’t worry,” Rachel replied neutrally.

“Was that supposed to be a kind of veiled threat? You’re not very good at these, are you?”

“About the chee,” Marco interjected.

“Ah, yes. Well, I don’t generally believe in rewarding laziness, but I do really want that cube. On the other hand, I can’t put myself at risk without some kind assurance that you’re not trying to con me. I need to see what you’re actually doing, I think.”

“You want photos?” Marco asked.

“Photos? Ha. I know how easy those are to fake. But I need something.”

“You are welcome to come on retrieval missions with me,” Ax said, sounding rather solemn for someone with sugary syrup dripping off their chin.

“Not you,” he said. “Rachel will come with me.” He grinned. “If you’re so glad to be rid of me, Rachel, it should be fun. Helping me retrieve _my_ cube after all these pointless tantrums trying to hide it from me. Just know that if you try anything, the chee...”

“We understand the stakes,” Jake said.

“Didn’t I tell you to shut up? Jesus, nobody listens… tomorrow at 4pm, all of us are meeting in Ax’s meadow. _All_ of us; I don’t want anyone running around behind my back. And Rachel and I are going on this retrieval mission, and if I think everyone is working very hard, I _might_ consider giving you a bit of extra time. In the meantime, my little sister wants to remind me about all my favourite cartoons that I seem to have forgotten about. Later.” He stood up and, quick as a flash, reached out and grabbed Ax’s syrupy bun plate. Before anyone could react, he dropped it upside-down on Rachel’s head, gumming up her hair.

I’d seen boys flick food at Rachel before. They usually got punched. But this time, Rachel didn’t even look up. She stared at the table and, unbelievably, started to cry.

David laughed, and walked away.

“Meeting adjourned,” Jake said, not even looking at her. “Get some sleep, everyone. Tomorrow will be a busy day.”


	24. Chapter 24

“Where’s David?” Rachel asked as we walked together into Ax’s clearing after school.

“He’s late,” Marco said.

<No, I’m not. I just wanted everyone to be together before I revealed myself.> An eagle landed on a branch above us. <So where is this piece we’re picking up?>

<It is under a church on a cliff overlooking the ocean,> Ax said.

<I know the place. Everyone morph and let’s go.>

We morphed. We went.

We hadn’t been to the church in a while. Once upon a time, we used to hang around there at the end of Tobias’ flying lessons, but nobody needed flying lessons any more, except maybe David himself.

<The piece is in these pipes,> Ax explained when we’d all demorphed, brushing his fingers against a piece of exposed, broken pipe. <It is dropped into a dead end at a height that would take more than one person to retrieve without getting trapped. The pipes are narrow, and would require a small morph, about this big.> He bunched his fists together.

David nodded. “Got anything like that, Rachel?”

“I have a couple of those morphs,” Rachel grated.

“Good. Cassie, go get me a morph.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s your job on this team, isn’t it? Chop, chop. Go find something.”

“You could have said something before I demorphed,” I grumbled, focusing once more on osprey.

But it didn’t take all that long to find him a morph. We’d trapped a large rat earlier. I collected it, flew back, and dropped it into his hands, where it promptly sank its teeth into his wrist. He ignored this.

I demorphed again while David acquired the rat and Rachel, after an unsure glance at me, started to morph. She could have waited for David and acquired his rat, but she already had a morph that would fit in the pipes. One of her very first morphs, and one she absolutely hated. She was becoming a shrew.

Rachel was a more experienced morpher than David. By the time he’d acquired the rat, tossed it casually aside, and started to focus, she was almost done.

When she was done and he was barely hairy, he reached down and snatched her up in one hand. Rachel, naturally, sank her teeth into his finger right to the bone, but Animorphs don’t care much about such minor injuries. He held her high and shouted at Ax, who had begun to advance, “Take one more step and I kill her!”

I heard Ax stop. I didn’t look. I prayed that no Animorphs were looking at me. _Look at Jake; he expects people to look at Jake. Not at me_.

If they did look at me, David didn’t notice, because he simply continued, “Don’t worry, I won’t kill her unless you make me. I still need you guys to get the rest of the cube, don’t I? So she’s safe as long as I’m safe, and I’m safe because none of you want anything to happen to her. This is all perfectly safe, see?

Were his eyes wider than normal, his breathing more rapid than normal, or was that just the partial morph? He was starting to panic. He was starting to realise that he was surrounded by Animorphs in an isolated location, and he was probably starting to wonder if all of us really valued the chee more than getting rid of someone so dangerous.

I told myself to stay calm. I told myself that this wasn’t a problem. It wasn’t ideal, but we had planned for this possibility. But it was dangerous, nevertheless; my best friend was literally in the hands of a panicking egotist with big plans, taking big risks.

I just had to hope he was as smart as he always seemed. _Be smart, David; please be smart_.

David glanced around the church. His eyes rested on something in the corner. “Marco, go grab that Pepsi bottle.”

“Do as he says, Marco,” Jake said after Marco hesitated. Marco raised his hands slightly and slowly, nonthreateningly moved past David, giving him a wide berth. He picked up the old bottle.

“This one?”

“Yeah. Take it back to the others.”

He did. Slowly.

“Okay, take the lid off – don’t lose it – and everyone morph cockroach.”

Marco blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“Cockroach! Now!” He squeezed Rachel a little, causing her to take another big chunk out of his hand. I remembered my time in his talons and made a note to apologise to Rachel later.

“Okay, okay, Jesus!” Marco said. The Animorphs were definitely glancing at me now, but I was already morphing, my skin hardening into chitin plates.

“When everyone’s morphed, get in the bottle,” David commanded. “I’ll let you out when we have the piece.”

<How can we take you at your word?> Ax asked. But he was morphing.

“I told you; I still need you guys for the other pieces, remember? So we can all trust each other. We’re allies.”

<You know,> I remarked to the other Animorphs privately as I morphed, <it takes a special type of mind to spend days threatening the lives of a group of people, trap them in a bottle as bugs, and still be so worried over making sure they see you as an ally.>

<This is part of the plan, right, Cassie?> Jake asked as we crawled into the bottle.

<Oh, yeah. This was a possibility.>

<Only I don’t remember you telling me about this part.>

<It was a possibility. David’s twice as smart as I am. I didn’t know how every detail of this would shake out.>

<Ah,> Marco remarked, <how reassuring. It’s always good to know, when an enemy is trapping you in a bottle as part of someone’s convoluted plan, that said enemy is twice as smart as the person who made the plan. That’s a feature I love all of my plans to have.>

<Will you guys relax? At this stage there’s almost nothing that can go wro – >

<Don’t say it!> Jake and Marco both said in unison.

We were jostled around for a few seconds, then once again, went still. I supposed that we were well and truly trapped.

<Tobias, stay well out of sight until we know it’s worked,> Jake said.

<Yeah, yeah, I’ve had a lot of practice at not being noticed,> Tobias replied, which was probably the saddest thing I’d heard all month.

<Okay, Rachel,> David announced a couple of minutes later, <lead the way. Ax? Directions.>

<It is a fairly simple pipe,> Ax said. <About a foot in, there is a short drop; only about six inches. Keep continuing past that point.>

<Ladies first,> David said.

<Yeah, yeah; I’m going.>

<Okay, we’re down the drop,> David said.

<Point of no return,> Jake said. <He can’t climb back up that bit. Tobias?>

We were moved again, then tipped out onto the ground. As we started to demorph, Ax continued, <A little way ahead is a turn right. Ignore it; keep going straight, but there is another drop. DO NOT take this drop!>

<Okay, we see it. Small bit of pipe going down, with more pipe continuing ahead, yeah?>

<Yes. Do you see the blue prism at the bottom?>

<No. It’s dark.>

<Ah, yes, of course. Well, there is a fragment of the device down there. One of you will need to get it while the other holds their tail and pulls them up.>

<Down you go, Rachel.>

<Are you kidding me?! I am NOT going down there! It’s small and dark enough up here!>

<Rachel, be sensible. You’re half my size right now. I can’t go down; you wouldn’t be able to pull me out.>

<Screw yourself, David.>

<I’m sorry, what was that? You want your friends to be stuck in that bottle forever?>

The process of Rachel getting the piece and being pulled back up took a little while. We were mostly demorphed by the time David said, <Okay, done.>

<The exit is around the next bend,> Ax said. <There will be a short drop and a little rubble, but...>

A shrew shot out of a pile of fallen bricks, between my legs, and started to demorph behind us. We waited, tense. We heard scrabbling.

<What is this?>

“That,” I said, moving bits of brick away, “is a size-dependent trap. Let’s say you wanted to catch a specific type of rodent, but not other types. What you do is, you set this up so that the mouth of the trap – this hole you fell through here, see – is big enough for your prey, and put an escape in – that’s this hole here – that’s too small for your prey. It’s a great way to catch, for example, big rats, without stopping tiny little shrews. Now, these spikes and this reinforced frame here, that’s not needed for normal rats; that’s something you add to be sure that people can’t demorph through it.”

David’s little rat body froze as I finished clearing away the rubble hiding the cage. He had a clear view of us all – me, working. Jake, looking sad, arms crossed. Marco holding up the empty Pepsi bottle. Rachel, still growing up from the floor. Ax, standing behind us, tail forward. Tobias, sitting on Ax’s tailblade.

“Tobias, as you know, is perfectly capable of growing hands,” Marco said, waving the bottle.

<You’re dead!> David snapped at Tobias.

<Wow, am I? I didn’t notice.>

“Nobody ever pays attention to comic book logic,” Marco said, rolling his eyes. “Never assume your enemy is dead until you’ve seen the body. And half the time not even then. He seemed to be gone for a while instead of telling us how evil you were so you just assumed he was dead? Sloppy.”

<Let me out,> David said.

“No,” I said.

<Let me out, or I’ll break this cube piece!>

<An escafil device cannot be safely disassembled,> Ax said. <What you are holding is a child’s building block with the gripping nubs sanded off.>

<The chee!> David tried. <The chee – >

“Are, as you said, supercomputers,” I said. “Supercomputers who have had their own ‘internet’ since before they came to this planet thousands of years ago. And you thought you could take them down with an email? Really? I warned them as soon as you told me. They can handle it.” I picked up the trap and glanced at Ax. “How long has he been in morph?”

<David has been in morph for seven and a half of your minutes,> Ax said.

“Gotcha.” I carried the cage out of the church.

<Why does that matter?> David asked. <Oh, I get it. You need something from me. You need information, and you’ve only got two hours to get it.>

“No, David.” I sat the cage down outside and sat down in the grass next to it, staring down over the cliff, watching the waves. “The whole point, David, is that we will take more than two hours.”


	25. Chapter 25

“Jake, Rachel,” Marco said, “your families are going to get panicked phone calls about Saddler going missing pretty soon. You should be home for that.”

“Yeah. We should.” Jake took one last long look at the rat cage, then walked away with his cousin. Neither looked back.

“Rachel is going to need you,” I told Tobias.

<Are you sure you can – >

“There are three of us here. It’s fine.”

<Alright. Good luck.> Tobias took to the sky.

<What are you doing?> David asked. <Look, I get it, okay? You guys beat me. You win. Fine, I give up, good game but it’s over. Now let me out.>

I looked at Marco. “I told my parents I’ll be out late, but your Dad – ”

“Is also expecting me to be home late,” Marco said, sitting on the church steps. “I figured this little mission might take a while.”

“You don’t need to be here,” I told him, ignoring David’s background pleading.

“Neither do you.”

“Yes. I do. It was my plan.”

“We all took part. And the more people here, the less chance it can go wrong, right?”

I sighed. Looked away. “I don’t want you to see m… look, your dad and Nora might get worried, okay?”

I let the half-confession dangle. _I don’t want you to see me like this_. It was a lie, technically; I didn’t think anything I’d done would make Marco think less of me. But it was the kind of fear he knew, the kind that he would understand.

It worked. He stood up, said “Don’t blame me if it goes wrong, then,” and, with a cheery little wave, left.

I looked at Ax.

<You need me to keep time,> he reminded me.

“Yeah.” I could have hidden a watch in the church with the cage, but the next part of the plan would need two people anyway. “Sorry, Ax.”

He smiled with his eyes, as andalites do. <Do you know how traitors are punished in the andalite military?>

“Do I want to know?”

<No. You do not.>

<Okay, guys I messed up,> David was saying. <I’m still learning this Animorph thing, okay? I can do better. Help me do better, Cassie.>

“Wow, you got to the bottom of that barrel fast,” I said. “That’s the best you can come up with? You know I take pity on you and teach you things?” I shook my head. “You can’t manipulate me.”

<I know. You beat me. You guys are smarter than me, okay?>

“Swing and a miss,” I said. “I know I’m not smarter than you and Ax doesn’t care about human intelligence. Try again.”

<Why are you doing this?>

“You left us with no choice. We could’ve done everything you said and you would have doomed this war.”

<I would have been a great leader!>

“No, you wouldn’t. Know how I know that? Because if you had the temperament for it, you wouldn’t be in that cage. This whole thing was the most obvious trap, the most overdone piece of theater ever! Jake wouldn’t have fallen for it. None of the other Animorphs would have fallen for it. I mean, really! Tobias was out following you all the time and _actually carried Rachel onto you_ at one point, but you still thought you’d managed to kill him? Jake, weary and defeated by your plans? Marco, angry and resisting but under your thumb? You making Rachel _cry_? Anyone else would have seen this whole thing for what it was. Anyone else would have resisted the temptation to bully their ‘allies’ and enjoy their power in location after location, wouldn’t have insisted on coming to this retrieval, wouldn’t have insisted on going down that pipe with Rachel, wouldn’t have been so sure that everyone would follow their little script that they thought they could trap them with a damn bottle; but not you, David. You were too high on your own power. You were _enjoying_ yourself too much. Ever since you got on this team, you’ve done nothing but see the worst in everyone else and twist everything to try to fit your own little fantasy. You have no respect for anyone else on this team, even less respect for anyone who isn’t human, and you want to lead a team in a war with aliens? Really? You bought your own hype, David. You think being dismissive and condescending is the same thing as being enlightened. You think being intelligent is the same thing as being competent. You think care and respect is a tribute paid by the weak to their stronger leaders. You were a danger to us not just through your aggression, not just through your attempts to kill us – never your fault, of course – but because even if you’d won, your sheer incompetence would bring this whole resistance down.”

<Then help m – >

“I told you, _you can’t manipulate us_. It doesn’t matter how smart you are; you can’t manipulate us because you never bothered to get to know us. A pity, really. I got to know you, David; none of this would have worked otherwise. But Ax and I… well, we’d always help you without needing to be manipulated, wouldn’t we? And we weren’t important like the human boys on the team, and we weren’t the pretty girl whose attention you wanted, and we weren’t her boyfriend standing in your way. We were beneath you. Why do you think we’re the only ones here now? You can’t hurt us, David; you never bothered to learn how.”

<You know what, Cassie? I thought you were the nice one. But you’re a twisted, ugly little thing inside, aren’t you? Enjoying this, I bet.>

“Sorry, I’m not Rachel. Try again.”

<Go on then, pretend to be all distant. Gloat it up. But I know what you’re really thinking. You voted for me to join this team! You both did! Marco told me! And now, after a little hiccup, you’re just abandoning me? Like _this_? Don’t you have a responsibility?>

“Not Jake, either,” I pointed out, inspecting my nails.

<Yeah, yeah, you’re very smart. But the fact that we’re here shows you have nothing to fear from me. You could just outsmart me again, right? If we just think of some way to make sure I can’t possibly betray you, I can be useful. This is a war – you can’t just throw away resources.>

“We’re onto Marco already? Do you have a mental roulette wheel or something? How long, Ax?”

<He has been in morph for eleven of your minutes.>

Eleven minutes. I looked out over the ocean again. In about a hundred and ten minutes, I’d open that cage and Ax and I would fly out to Royan Island. It was more than two hours away, which was why the journey would take two people – one to hold David safely in the sky while the other demorphed in the water. We’d scouted the island earlier, and it seemed that it had been abandoned since we’d destroyed the yeerk base, but there was a healthy rat population there. They looked fat, and presumably happy.

But that was still a hundred and ten minutes away. I tuned David’s voice out.

<Cassie,> Ax said privately after awhile, <I know that we are here because you felt that killing a teammate, even in these circumstances, would be unkind. But I fear that this fate may in fact be far worse. I do not think that this is merciful.>

“So what?” I asked, not caring that David could hear me. “He forfeited the right to that kind of consideration when he started trying to kill Animorphs.”

David’s future would be short, and brutal, and dangerous. David’s future might be worse than the clean death offered by Rachel.

But Rachel’s future wouldn’t be burdened with the deliberate, conscious killing of a teammate. Jake’s wouldn’t be darkened by the memory of goading and enabling her to solve his problem. Tobias wouldn’t have to watch her struggle with the stain, knowing that he was the reason, and maybe even Marco, seeing everyone come out of this situation alive, might lighten up on his fatalistic obsession with the riddles and dictates of alien gods.

Yes – it was important, very important, that we didn’t kill David. It was important to solve our problems without death, and with minimal violence.

This was mercy.


End file.
